The World Bank Group in Madagascar, Fiscal Years 2007–21

This Country Program Evaluation assesses the development effectiveness of the Bank Group’s engagement in Madagascar between fiscal years 2007 and 2021 and surfaces lessons to inform the design and implementation of the next Bank Group–supported partnership strategy with Madagascar. The evaluation reviews the evolution of the Bank Group’s engagement strategy and its implementation over and lessons from experience. It contains a more in depth assessment of Bank Group support in two areas that represent core development challenges: (i) elite capture and (ii) development of rural areas. Bank Group support was increasingly relevant to Madagascar’s core development constraints and contributed to significant progress in several areas. World Bank support contributed to modernizing the country’s tax and customs revenue administrations, improving revenue collection, and generating local revenues, as well as to improved subnational public financial management and decentralized management of natural resources and land certificates. In terms of rural development, Bank Group support contributed to short-term increases in agricultural production and greater food security, the development of value chains, and the government’s increased ability to mitigate the impacts of shocks on Madagascar’s most vulnerable populations to preserve critical human capital. Overall progress was hampered by limited success in designing interventions to avoid misuse by a few high-status individuals. In rural areas, overall progress in increasing small farmers productivity fell short because the adoption of technology to increase agricultural productivity did not adequately target smallholder production systems and did not provide sufficient incentives for farmers in the forest frontier to change their land use practices.