Fireside Discussion with Ajay Banga & Hugh Evans | EDA Côte d'Ivoire 2024

First of all, thank you for having me. Global Citizen, Bridgewater, the president of Côte d'Ivoire, all the leaders who are here — I want to thank you not only for having us here but for what this shows of our shared commitment to doing the right thing in Africa. I think that's why we're all here. So why am I in this job? Years ago, I began to speak about the challenges that I see in the world as being on three sides of a triangle. One side is the trade-off between one versus many — this is the inequality. It could be caused by the color of your skin, where you were born, your religion. Many things create inequality, things that you are not in control of. We have to change that. The second is humanity versus nature — this is the challenge of us prospering at the cost of our planet, and our future generations will pay the price for what we do. The problem on the third side of the triangle, why these two sides don't fall down, is the trade-off between long-term and short-term that you and I have discussed. The issue is that society incentivizes you to produce short-term solutions, while the problems we are talking about — inequality and nature — are long-term problems, and therefore we have a mismatch. The World Bank is one of the few institutions that can think long-term and invest long-term, so I'm very lucky to be here. I'm a Sikh. I was born in India, educated in India. My religion has in its holy book, in the first paragraph, a very important thing that you learn: you reward yourself by serving others. I have had a very lucky life. I grew up in a middle-class family. I did very well in my career because of the education and values my parents gave me. It is my chance to show that I don't take it for granted. Whether I can actually do something about it, I don't know, but I'm going to try my best. That's the idea.

I think it's useful to step back for a second. There are 77 countries who currently have access to IDA funding, and I'll explain what that means in a minute. But remember that 36 countries have graduated from IDA over the last 30-40 years, so it actually works. Countries like South Korea, Turkey — these were all receivers of IDA financing, China and so on. Today these are generous donors to IDA. So IDA plays a catalyst role. IDA is not the reason they graduated; their countries, their governments, their people worked hard to graduate. IDA is the catalyst for it, nothing more than that. And what we want to be is the catalyst for the next 77. I believe that IDA is the source of the World Bank financing that goes to those countries who have the biggest challenge in their development. It's concessional financing — about 25 to 30% of it is pure grants, no repayment, no interest. About 70% is long-term concessional, so that you can devote the time and energy to doing the right thing for your population. My belief is that Africa — sub-Saharan Africa in particular, but Africa as a whole, and some other countries — are faced with an intertwined challenge, not just of poverty and the spreading of prosperity, but the challenges of healthcare, pandemics, fragility, conflict, and violence, which are either caused or exacerbated by climate change. We don't have the luxury of choosing to fight only poverty. I think we have to be willing to look at the intertwined challenges that these problems pose. That is why the World Bank's mission was changed to say not just the eradication of poverty, but the eradication of poverty on a livable planet. So we can help solve what is relevant in that country to make the quality of life of its citizens that which they deserve. All they deserve is a fair chance, and then they can take it from there. That's what IDA is about. IDA provides three things: affordable financing, which I just spoke to; knowledge and expertise and capacity building, which is very important — countries who are not as lucky as the others don't always have the capacity to deal with an issue, we can help; and the third is that IDA provides leverage — the magic of financial engineering. A dollar from the donors that comes to me enables me to go to the private bond markets with my AAA sovereign rating and raise money four times for a dollar, so $4 for a dollar to put to use. That's the magic of the $120 billion that we're trying to raise.

Let me not put it as much better. I believe there is a role for bilateral, but there is a role for institutions like ours. After all, every country that is giving money to us is giving it from their taxpayers, and therefore their taxpayers have to see the benefit of that money in their eyes. So bilateral aid has a more direct benefit typically, because the country stands in front of that aid. But the multilateral aid to institutions like ours enables the ability for this to be multiplied a number of times. One of the people in the audience here is a partner from the Agency for Development of France, Rémy, and I don't know exactly where he's sitting — he's sitting there. They have the same magic; they can take money and multiply it. I think this idea of leverage is an important factor to be built in by donors to find the right balance between bilateral and multilateral, because problems are too big to solve $1 at a time. We need public money, we need multilateral money, but we need the private sector and we need philanthropic money — people like you involved, people like Bridgewater involved. We need all shoulders at the wheel. Time is not on our side.

It's actually a very good question. The first thing I'd like to talk about is why I talk about the urgency of now, and I want to connect it to the tyranny of small things. A lot of people tend to take money and spread it like peanut butter on a sandwich — do a little bit of everything. A little bit of everything is a little bit of nothing. What we need to do is focus on really big challenges and try to take them one at a time. What these leaders do every day in their life is to pick important things and put money after them. I want to help them do that. Where am I coming from on the urgency of now? It is not from climate change, it is not from healthcare, it is not from education, even though those are very important building blocks. I will tell you my urgency: in the emerging markets, 1.2 billion young people whom we are blessed to have, because that is the future of our world. Young people are our future; they will give us the optimism and the productivity for us to have a terrific opportunity for the next 200 years as citizens of a planet. But guess what? There is a demographic dividend in the emerging markets. We call it that because young people will mature and drive growth and productivity. That sounds right if, while they're growing up, they get clean air, clean water, education, and health. When they grow up, they must have a job, because a job is not just earning — a job is dignity. Poverty is a state of mind as much as it is a state of being. We have to understand that. Opportunity changes that issue. 1.2 billion people are coming through this pipe to be ready for a job within the next 12 to 15 years in the emerging markets. The same markets today are on a pathway to generate 420 million jobs. Projections are not destiny, and projections are only projections, so maybe we are wrong by 100 million here or there, but the problem is 1.2 versus 420 is a very big gap of almost 800 million people whose aspirations we have to be concerned about. If we don't be concerned about them — the president of Côte d'Ivoire is here, he knows this, he worries about this every day. His government cares deeply about their young people. 400,000 young people every year in this country are adding to the capacity of this country to do more. Our job is to deliver opportunity for them. So it is really important. My sense of urgency comes from these young people, because they are our hope and optimism, but if you don't do well by them, then they will also be our challenge in society. Time is not on our side.

The first thing: why do I focus on job creation, and why did I say it's not about climate and education? That's not actually the case. Job creation is the outcome of the enabling efforts that happen with healthcare, that happened with education and skilling, that happened with resiliency in your growth, that happened with the climate fight, that happened with all the work we have to do in infrastructure to be able to make jobs possible. You cannot do that. That's why we have announced this partnership with the African Development Bank to reach 300 million people in Africa by 2030 with energy, because electricity is a basic human right. You cannot build jobs without electricity. You cannot deliver healthcare or education without electricity. So we have to do this piece by piece. Now, what are the facts, some numbers about IDA that may help people around the world, including here? In the last 10 years, IDA has put $270 billion to work. But in the last five, it was $170 out of the $270, so you can see some of the acceleration. What I want to do is to take that even further with the new replenishment. Of that $270 billion, $180 is in Africa. Of the $170 which is the last five years, $120 is in Africa. 70% of the money is going to Africa. That's how it should be. This is where the opportunity of these young people is. Third, of that $180 in Africa — in fact, of the total $270, $85 billion went to climate. But guess what? In the last five years, that $85 was $60 billion, so it's accelerating. And of that $60, 60% went into adaptation and resiliency, because that is what you need. What do I mean by resiliency? Schools and roads that can withstand bad weather, of course, but also simple things: when you build a school, if the roof of the school is red tin, you paint it white. The temperature inside the room drops by 8 degrees. It makes a child more capable of coming to school and studying. Temperature is a problem at that level. So these are not rocket science ideas. Some part of it is harder: heat-resistant varieties of seeds, drip irrigation — these are all technologies that exist today. So IDA does all this. What is the outcome of some of this? In the last 10 years, same 10-year period when $270 billion was deployed, 117 million people were connected to electricity. I compare that to the 300 million I want to do in 7 years — you can see that I'm stepping on the gas. Second, 900 million people got access to neonatal and maternal care and vaccinations. I want to get 1.5 billion people access to primary healthcare, basic healthcare through primary health centers, including a whole lot of them in Africa by 2030. It'll build early diagnostics but generate jobs. And the third that it has done is connect 94 million people to drinking water, as an example. And the fourth, which I think people forget: four countries are going through the G20 expert framework on debt relief. We talked about debt. What are the four? Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Zambia. Since that started, the only institution to give them money — we have given them $16 billion, half grant, half deeply concessional. We are their lifeline. We cannot do that without the proper IDA funding. We need the support of your community and the people here to get that funding.

There are multiple levels of interaction. The first level is to have a real discussion about the enabling environment for growth. It ranges from investing in infrastructure, without which growth cannot happen — bridges, roads, airports, railways, agricultural warehouses, things we take for granted, the most important: electricity, healthcare delivery, all that. The second aspect is about the policy and regulatory environment. We are busy discussing with a number of governments in this room to reach the 300 million people we need to reach on the continent with energy. The president of the African Union is my biggest partner in this. He's helping me. We are creating a summit for heads of state in Tanzania on the 27th and 28th of January. 15 heads of state are coming, others will come, and they will talk about what they are doing on policy and regulatory change to enable us, governments, and the private sector to work together. We cannot do this by ourselves. We must have more partners. I think that's the second thing we work on. The third thing we work on is helping to build bankable projects on the ground. This afternoon, I'm going with the Agency of French Development and with the prime minister of Côte d'Ivoire to see a vocational training system that the president and prime minister are pushing to help young people in Côte d'Ivoire not only get trained properly but also find jobs within a few months of being trained. The idea of doing that is to enable these young people to have hope in a job. So the translation from us to our governments is everything from policy and regulation to actually projects on the ground, whether it is in resiliency, climate, education, or health. All of those topics.

You know the topic: Make Some Noise. This is the time for you to make some noise. Make people hear that we are in a world in which borders will not protect us from health challenges and climate challenges. The aspirations of young people deserve to be addressed, so they stay in their home country and build the wealth of that country, or they go to a country because they desired to be there by what they bring. We don't want people to migrate through boats and run the risk of dying or crossing jungles because they want to go for a holiday. They go because the alternative is even worse. We should not allow them to feel the need to migrate by giving them the chance to feel the pleasure and the power of their own choices. I grew up in India. I have chosen to become an American and live there for the opportunities I got and my family, but I went as an educated person with values and systems, as a proper immigrant going there for reasons of growth. I want everyone to have not just the chance to do that but to also pursue their dreams wherever they choose to be, because they are valuable, productive people. Make some noise for that. Make some noise, everyone.