Niger Is a Warning for the World Bank

The military coup in Niger this summer has sparked a development crisis. Since there is no international consensus on the junta’s legitimacy, donors have cut major funding to one of the world’s poorest nations. In August, the World Bank, the largest development actor in the country, suspended most of its nearly $5 billion Niger portfolio; overnight, millions of families lost access to critical services funded by the bank, including quality education and health care. Many farmers and other agricultural workers—who make up 85 percent of the population—now face future harvests without necessary support, jeopardizing Niger’s food supply.

Niger should be a warning to the World Bank that its playbook is no longer working. For most of the bank’s existence, its traditional model—which is built around state partnerships and depends on government legitimacy—has proved highly successful. Its interventions have lifted billions of people out of poverty and helped rebuild nations after war.

But the geography of poverty is changing: Its future looks more like the complexity in Niger than the relative stability of India. By the end of this decade, an estimated two-thirds of extreme poverty globally will be concentrated in areas marked by state fragility or active conflict. As the World Bank finalizes its plan for reform at its annual meetings next week, it needs to recognize this reality. The bank should move to a people-first, rather than government-first, operating model, as my organization, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), argues in a new report. Where governments can deliver, the bank should support them; where they cannot fully, it should look to bolster civil society.

The challenges in Niger are extreme but hardly exceptional. Recent years have seen what United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has called an “epidemic of coups,” particularly in Africa’s Sahel region. Coups—or attempted ones—have taken place in Mali, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Guinea, and Guinea Bissau. Amid growing instability, nonstate armed groups have proliferated around the world, and an estimated 150 to 160 million people globally now live under the direct control of these groups or in places where they are vying for control.

The good news is that in Niger and other crisis settings, local and international nongovernmental organizations such as the IRC are already on the ground with knowledge of—and relationships with—local communities. They will stay and deliver amid turmoil if the bank supports them.

The World Bank has worked with civil society before, but only as a last resort. The bank has piloted promising models with the U.N. and NGOs in multiple countries, with programs that have provided social safety nets, trained health workers, rehabilitated water and sanitation facilities, and ensured the delivery of basic services such as health and education.

When a drought brought the risk of famine to Somalia in 2017, the government was not eligible for World Bank funding due to outstanding arrears. So to provide food, clean water, and cash assistance in Somalia, the bank pivoted to support the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross. More recently, the 2021 Taliban takeover left Afghanistan under the control of de facto authorities that are still not recognized by the international community. Development programs shut down overnight, including massive World Bank initiatives that had propped up most of the country’s health system. After months of uncertainty on whether the World Bank would remain engaged in Afghanistan, it successfully reconfigured many of its programs to be run by the U.N. and NGOs.

These partnerships, however, remain ad hoc. The World Bank now has an opportunity to systematize its approach to working with civil society as the bank and its shareholders convene with the International Monetary Fund in Marrakech next week.

At these annual meetings, shareholders will decide whether to approve the bank’s ambitious proposal for reform and take steps to recognize that crisis settings are at the heart of the bank’s mission and need to be prioritized in order to effectively address global challenges such as climate change. In the proposal, the bank commits to scaling up its operations and “deepen[ing] its partnership with civil society.” The proposal also includes a new “Partnership Charter” that will “articulate principles for establishing and working in partnerships.”

The bank’s shareholders should not only endorse this road map, but also ensure it is followed up with a plan of action. That would include moving quickly to produce a public report that takes stock of past civil society partnerships, particularly with NGOs, and identifies lessons learned and recommendations for improving these collaborations going forward. The proposed Partnership Charter should identify clear criteria for when to bring in civil society partners. It should also catalyze efforts to map out where nongovernmental partnerships are appropriate and to start preselecting and vetting potential new NGO partners.

Partnerships would not look the same in every country. In states with government capacity that experience sudden conflict or natural disaster, such as Ukraine, civil society could play an advisory role and provide additional surge capacity and newly required services, including those related to psychosocial needs or gender-based violence. Other countries, such as Cameroon or Somalia, would likely benefit from hybrid operating models, whereby the U.N. and NGOs sustain services in territory outside of government control, ensuring access to populations that would otherwise be inaccessible. In the few most volatile settings, such as Niger, the bank could operate exclusively via civil society in the immediate term while still designing services that can one day be easily transitioned back to government control. By normalizing these partnerships as tools in its toolbox, the bank will be better prepared for future crises.

Of course, these programs cannot overcome the effects of conflict. Nor can they put a country back on a path toward recovery and economic growth. But they can help safeguard hard-earned development gains and prevent humanitarian conditions from becoming catastrophic. The alternative is to wait and try to rebuild failed states once conflict or political crisis ends. Many of the bank’s shareholders, including the United States, would benefit from investing in these programs now. Otherwise, they face paying for more costly humanitarian responses down the line.

The World Bank has an impressive track record. But if it continues on its current path, it will gravitate toward intervening in places where it is easiest to deliver—not where funding is most needed. The IRC operates in dozens of conflict zones and crisis settings. In too many of those places, the majority of the population is slipping into humanitarian need and requiring aid that should be a last resort. In the absence of wider development strategies, it falls on the shoulders of aid workers to keep people alive, with little hope of helping them rebuild their lives.

Nigeriens cannot wait in limbo for years. Neither can the millions of people caught in conflicts around the world. Partnering with civil society to fill the gap left by fragile governance is a solution that has been tested, proved, and now needs to be institutionalized.