MDB Results 2026: An Independent Assessment · Day 3 of 7
The Casino That Used to Be the Only One in Town
Kofi’s father had been invited to Abidjan for a meeting. On the way to the airport, there was, as always, one more meeting. And the meeting was at the IFC.
They took a car.
It pulled up outside a building that was nothing like the cruise ship and nothing like the battleships. It was enormous. It was gaudy. Six hundred feet of glass and marble and light. Pavilions jutting out at angles that no serious institution should attempt. Art visible through the windows — real art, the kind that signals to the people arriving that they have come to a place that understands their world.
It looked, Kofi thought, exactly like a casino.
Not a back-alley casino. Not a hole-in-the-wall casino. A palace casino. The kind where the carpets are so thick you cannot hear your own footsteps. Where the coffee is so good it seems unreasonable. Where the light is calibrated to make everyone look like they belong.
“What is this?” Kofi asked.
“The International Finance Corporation,” said his father. “The private sector arm of the World Bank Group.”
“It does not look like it belongs to the World Bank.”
“That is precisely the point.”
The doorman was enormous.
Not large. Enormous. Made of paper like the other genies — the same numbers flickering across his surface, the same rustle when he moved — but scaled up. A bouncer’s dimensions. The kind of presence that fills a doorframe completely and makes you feel, without any words being spoken, that entry is conditional.
He looked down at Kofi.
“Day three,” said the genie.
“Day three,” said Kofi. “Can we go in?”
The genie stepped aside. But slowly.
Inside, the casino floor.
Kofi had been in the World Bank’s atrium — democratic, soaring glass, everyone moving purposefully. He had been in the IMF’s corridor — serious, quiet, the urgency of macroeconomics at two in the morning. This was different. This was a casino floor. Tables arranged in groups. Staff manning each one. Chips moving. Conversations in the language of returns, not sectors. Not components. Not results frameworks. Returns.
The genie walked him to the first table.
“This,” said the genie, “is the middle-income table.”
Kofi looked at the people sitting there. Private equity partners. Infrastructure fund managers. Emerging market bond traders. Suits that fit. Phones that responded.
“How does this table do?” Kofi asked.
“Reasonably well. The people here are familiar to the house. Repeat clients. Companies the IFC has worked with across multiple cycles. When the house knows the client — when the sponsor is established, when the market is functioning — the results are good. Approximately 84 percent of bets placed with repeat clients pay off.”
“84 percent. That is a good table.”
“It is a good table. It is also an easy table. These clients would find capital without the IFC. The question the house is supposed to be answering — the question that justifies the subsidised chips — is whether it is doing something the private market would not do on its own. At this table, most of the time, the answer is: probably not.”
The genie walked him to the far end of the floor.
A different atmosphere. Fewer players. Less well-dressed. The chips on the table were smaller. The conversations were harder.
“This,” said the genie, “is the fragile states table.”
Kofi looked at it carefully.
“How does this table do?”
The genie was quiet for a moment.
“11 percent.”
Kofi stared.
“11 percent Satisfactory. In the places where the IFC made its biggest promises — where it committed to deploying 40 percent of its money, where it asked donors for the most concessional capital — its investments were working one time in nine.”
“And the croupiers?”
“96 percent of bets placed at this table were made by people who were not in the room. They placed the bet from a building six thousand miles away and sent the chips by wire transfer.”
“The croupiers are in Washington,” said Kofi, “and the tables are in Kinshasa.”
“That is exactly right.”
In the corner of the casino floor, set slightly apart, was a small window. A cashier’s window. A sign above it: PRIVATE SECTOR. The window was closed.
“What is that?” Kofi asked.
“That is where the IFC gives out additional money to attract other investors. When the IFC is at the table, other private investors come and sit down because they trust the house’s due diligence. The house mobilises capital. That window opens when there are enough other investors around the table.”
“And does it open often?”
“At the fragile states table — the window opens for one bet in three. The rest of the time, the house is sitting alone with its own chips.”
“So the extra money — the concessional money from donor governments — is supposed to bring other investors to the table. And at the tables that need it most, it is bringing them one time in three.”
“And there is a more fundamental question. The IFC received a special fund — 2.5 billion dollars specifically to take the casino into the hardest rooms. And during the period of that fund, the IFC’s own commitments in those markets — the money it would have put on the table without the special fund — actually fell. The special fund did not add to the casino’s activity. It replaced the casino’s own chips.”
Kofi thought about this.
“That is not additionality,” he said. “That is a refund.”
The genie said nothing. The numbers on his surface flickered.
“Tell me about when this casino opened,” said Kofi.
The genie settled into a chair at an empty table.
“1956. At that time, it was the only casino of its kind in the world. There was nowhere else the private sector could go to get development finance at scale. And so the casino was full. The private sector came. The crowds were real. The chips were real.”
“And now?”
“Now there are other casinos. Dozens of them. The Asian Development Bank has a private sector window. The African Development Bank has one. The European Investment Bank. The AIIB. The New Development Bank. Bilateral development finance institutions from Germany, France, the UK, Japan, the Netherlands — each with their own floor, their own tables, their own chips. Some of them newer. Some of them larger. Some of them better suited to specific markets.”
“And the IFC is 70 years old,” said Kofi.
“70 years old. Trying to compete with places that were built for the world as it is now, not the world as it was in 1956. The crowd has reduced. The market has moved. The IFC needs to differentiate. To prove that it offers something the others do not.”
“And does it?”
The genie looked at the 11 percent figure still glowing on the fragile states table display.
“Not yet. Not consistently. Not at the tables where it matters most.”
“So what does it do?” Kofi asked. “An old man trying to reinvent himself in a very competitive world.”
“It does what old establishments do when the competition gets serious. It talks about reform. And then it continues to place most of its bets at the middle-income table where the clients are familiar and the returns are predictable.”
“Because that is where the incentive is.”
“The incentive for the IFC is volume. Chips deployed. Deals closed. The annual report number — the one that goes to the Board, that drives the headlines — is how much the casino put on the tables. Not whether the rooms were ready. Not whether anyone won.”
“Tell me about the big brother,” said Kofi.
The genie looked at him.
“How do you know about the big brother?”
“My father mentioned it in the car. He said the IFC needs help from the cruise ship.”
“Your father is perceptive. The IFC and the World Bank are part of the same group. Same shareholders. Same building complex. And the relationship between them is complicated in the way that relationships between siblings always are.”
“What kind of help does the casino need?”
“The cruise ship lends to governments. It builds roads, and power systems, and water infrastructure, and institutional capacity. It creates the environment in which private investment becomes possible. A functioning grid. A working port. A transparent regulatory framework. Without those foundations, the casino’s tables are set up in rooms that nobody can reach.”
“So the cruise ship builds the room,” said Kofi, “and the casino puts the table in it.”
“When it works well, yes. The cases where the IFC has genuinely worked are almost always cases where the World Bank built the infrastructure on which the IFC bet was placed.”
“And when the cruise ship has not built the room?”
“Then the casino is placing bets in empty rooms. The 11 percent Satisfactory in fragile states is, in significant part, the cost of operating at tables where the foundational investment was never made.”
“So the IFC needs the World Bank,” said Kofi.
“The IFC needs the World Bank. And the big boys who sit at the World Bank’s table — the sovereign governments, the finance ministers — create the regulatory environment in which the IFC’s private sector clients operate. If the big brother can tell the big boys that the casino is coming, that the terms are reasonable — that changes the room. That brings the crowd back.”
Kofi’s father appeared at the door. The car was waiting.
Kofi took one last look at the casino floor. The middle-income table, doing well. The fragile states table, nearly empty. The cashier’s window in the corner, mostly closed. The enormous bouncer at the door, making entry feel conditional.
“The casino is trying to serve the world’s hardest markets,” said Kofi. “With croupiers in Washington. Paying out one time in nine. And the special fund that was supposed to change this was used to replace the chips it would have played with anyway.”
“Yes,” said the genie.
“And the answer is the big brother down the street.”
“The answer is the big brother down the street. Who is 82 years old too. And has its own challenges.”
Kofi thought about this for a moment.
“It would be highly inappropriate,” he said, “to put casino tables in the World Bank atrium.”
“Highly inappropriate,” agreed the genie. “And the reverse is equally true. You cannot convert the World Bank Country Director from a reform advocate into a debt collector. That is what happens when the same institution that designs the fiscal adjustment programme also holds equity in the project whose sovereign guarantee it just helped negotiate. The Country Director is no longer giving advice. He is protecting an investment. Those are not the same job.”
“And there is a documented case,” said Kofi.
“A detailed note has been sent to the World Bank and the IFC with specific evidence of how the merged logic — the same institution acting simultaneously as advisor, lender, and equity holder — produced an outcome that was worse than either institution operating independently. The sum of the combination was lower than the sum of the parts standing alone. That note is with the institutions for comment and will be published on this platform shortly.”
He paused.
“The IFC and the World Bank work best when they work in sequence. The Bank builds the room. The IFC puts the table in it. They are different businesses. They should stay different businesses.”
Kofi walked out into the afternoon.
Behind him, the palace casino blazed in the Washington sun. Gaudy and huge. 70 years of development finance. Tables in Kinshasa, croupiers here. The crowd thinner than it used to be. The competition fiercer. 70 years old. An old man trying to reinvent himself in a very competitive world.