Six Open Letters
One letter per day to the people who run these institutions — and the owners who should be demanding better.
Between April 13 and April 18, 2026, this platform published one open letter per day during the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF. Each letter names a specific individual or body, documents a specific institutional failure, and asks five questions that a serious accountability framework would require to be answered. All underlying analysis is available at the Analysis index.
The $3.4 Billion That Was Not Checked: Five Questions on the Nigeria COVID Emergency Disbursement
In April 2020, the IMF disbursed $3.4 billion to Nigeria under the Rapid Financing Instrument — its largest single COVID emergency disbursement. The Accountant General was convicted in 2024. The IMF’s own Legal Department documented near-universal governance failures across 50 recipient countries. The repayment was collected in full. The receipts were not checked. You are in Washington this week. The question is simple: what happened to the money?
Read the Letter →81 Years Without a Rating System: On the Independence and Mandate of the Independent Evaluation Office
The IMF has been lending to sovereign governments for 81 years and has never produced a project-level rating of whether those programmes delivered their stated objectives. The IEO is structurally disempowered: its budget determined by management, its recommendations advisory, its findings published alongside management’s rebuttal in the same document. The COVID emergency was the test. The governance framework was a checklist. The IEO could not name Nigeria. Five questions on what genuine independence would require — before the next $20–50 billion goes out.
Read the Letter →Blended Finance, the Advisory-Creditor Conflict, and the Proposed Merger: Governance Questions from the Nigeria Power Sector Experience
The Nigeria Power Sector Guarantees Project is a case study in what happens when all three arms of the World Bank Group deploy financial instruments in the same sector simultaneously — while the same institution advises the government on the policy framework those instruments depend on. IFC led the equity investment. MIGA insured the gas infrastructure. The Bank guaranteed the power purchase agreement. The Country Director became a debt collector. The sector financial deficit reached $1 billion. You signed the Statutory Committee Report on April 16, 2014. Five questions on the advisory-creditor conflict — and what it means for the proposed merger.
Read the Letter →Where Are the Jobs? The FCV Strategy Is Right. The Delivery Machine Is Not.
$119.8 billion committed to Sub-Saharan Africa since 2015. $89.1 billion — 74 percent — went to projects rated below Satisfactory by IEG. In fragile states globally: $58.2 billion evaluated, $41.6 billion below standard. The six Global Practices most directly responsible for jobs have Satisfactory rates in FCS ranging from 13.5 percent (Macroeconomics & Trade, which manages the DPO instrument) to 36.7 percent (Agriculture). The FCV Strategy correctly identifies the problem. The approval culture Wappenhans named in 1992 is still in the data today. Five questions on what specifically changes in the incentive architecture — not the strategy, the architecture.
Read the Letter →The Board That Approves Everything and Is Accountable for Nothing
You approved the Nigeria Power Sector Guarantees Project in May 2014, noting that distribution sector reform was a prerequisite for its development impact. That prerequisite was never met. You approved the SOML PforR in 2015 knowing that procurement fraud had occurred in the implementing ministry. You approved the Nigeria COVID RFI under a governance framework your own evaluators later described as a checklist. In each case the rating remained Moderately Satisfactory throughout implementation. The Zedillo Commission told you to change this in 2009. The Spring Meetings are the right time to ask: what are you actually for?
Read the Letter →On the Reform Agenda and the Role of Shareholders in Advancing It
Thirty years of reform proposals. The same pattern every year. The only rational explanation is game theory. The World Bank’s approval culture is a Nash equilibrium — sustained by three structural parameters: the sovereign guarantee, the Board co-approval architecture, and the MTI career pipeline. No within-system reform changes it. Only the Governors can change the payoff structure that sustains it.
Read the Letter →