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This is the World Bank's blog on governance and anti-corruption. It aims at providing a space for debate and knowledge sharing on this critical field of development. | Learn more...

leadership

Problems solved: corruption, lack of transparency and leadership

Submitted by Kathrin on Wed, 2009-05-06 16:55

The global economic crisis revealed large scale fraud in the financial sector and dropped public confidence and trust. This presents a daunting array of challenges to companies and government alike. It is practically impossible for a single stakeholder on their own to effectively address the problems that contributed to this crisis: corruption, greed, lack of transparency and leadership. Hence there is a case for collective action that enables companies to collaborate with competitors and/or stakeholders from the public and civil society sector to create and maintain fair market conditions.

Recognizing this, the World Bank Institute is organizing an Executive Development Program precisely on such joint approaches titled Fighting Corruption through Collective Action in Today’s Competitive Marketplaces. 

Dirty Water: Joining forces to curb corruption in the Water Supply and Sanitation Sector

Submitted by Maria on Tue, 2009-04-07 09:12

World Water Day was celebrated on March 22 and to bid farewell to a month full of water related activities, the World Bank Institute and Transparency International launched the book “Improving Transparency, Integrity, and Accountability in Water Supply and Sanitation” in an event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on April 1, 2009.

More than 1 billion people around the world live without access to safe, potable water, in part because of poor governance and corruption. To raise awareness on issues such as embezzlement of funds, bribes for access to illegal water connections, manipulation of meter counters, and collusion in public contracts, the World Bank Institute, together with Transparency International, developed this book to provide a useful tool for diagnosing, analyzing, and remedying systemic corruption in the water supply and sanitation sectors.

This books stems from the twin capacity building programs carried out by WBI and the World Bank Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) in Honduras and Nicaragua in September 2007, previously discussed at this blog.

A message from Kaufmann

Submitted by Kaufmann on Thu, 2008-12-04 16:48

Some of you may know that I am in the process of moving on from the World Bank to the Brookings Institution.  Let me also share with you the email I have just sent out to many outside friends, colleagues and partners. 

 

Dear friends, partners,

As some of you may already know, I announced internally over a month ago that I was moving on from the World Bank. I wanted to write to you directly to give you my new coordinates, to briefly share a thought, and to thank you for your continued collaboration.

Mo Ibrahim Foundation: promoting good governance and leadership in Africa

Submitted by Alfredo on Thu, 2008-10-09 10:37

“Without good governance, Africa will go nowhere.”  This is the vision behind the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, a $400 million African initiative that aims building a better Africa by supporting civil society and democratic African leaders in the promotion of good governance.  While some of the Foundation’s approaches are traditional among governance practitioners, others are less common, such as a monetary prize for sub-Saharan African leaders committed to good governance and democracy.

On the civil society front, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation launched this week the second round of the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, a governance assessment and ranking of 48 sub-Saharan African countries according to five general criteria: (i) safety and security, (ii) rule of law, transparency and corruption, (iii) participation and human rights, (iv) sustainable economic opportunity, and (v) human development.  As other governance indicators, the Ibrahim Index’s goal is to assist citizens in holding their governments accountable and to highlight areas requiring a better performance.

Notebooks for school children in Burundi: Improving performance in the education sector

Submitted by Susana on Fri, 2008-10-03 07:00

During my recent mission to Bujumbura, Burundi, I witnessed the rapid results initiative team in action.  Earlier this March, a group of government officials participated in a training session on the use of the Rapid Results Approach to promote good governance and anti-corruption.  During this training, a group of officials from the Ministry of Education decided that this method could help them to improve efficiency in their sector.