IDA turns 65 this year. Since 1960 it has disbursed more than $500 billion in concessional loans and grants to the world’s poorest countries. IDA21, approved in March 2025, commits $100 billion for FY2026–2028 — the largest replenishment in the institution’s history.
A new paper published today asks the question that 65 years of IDA Deputies Reports have not answered directly: what has the money actually delivered? The IEG database covers over 12,000 evaluated projects. The answer is that between FY2015 and FY2026, $117.0 billion of committed IDA resources — 68.9 percent — went to projects that did not achieve Satisfactory development outcomes. The IDA-only Satisfactory rate has been flat at 31 percent for two decades.
The paper tracks IDA through all 21 replenishments — from IDA1’s $912 million in 1961 to IDA21’s $100 billion in 2025. It maps performance by region (Africa receives 70% of resources and records the weakest outcomes), by instrument (PforR at ~61% versus DPF at 16.3%), and by Global Practice (MTI manages the largest portfolio at $26.9bn and delivers Satisfactory outcomes 11.7% of the time).
The reform proposal at the centre of the paper: a Challenge Fund for IDA22 that allocates 25 percent of IDA resources competitively to non-Bank implementing partners — evaluated on the same IEG S+ standard as Bank projects. In a world where USAID has closed and hundreds of proven implementing organisations are hungry for capital, the Bank’s monopoly over IDA delivery is a policy choice, not a structural necessity. The Challenge Fund does not replace the Bank. It benchmarks it.