World Bank
World Bank agency page
Who we are:
The World Bank is a development agency founded in 1944 in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA. With its headquarters located in Washington D.C., it has offices in more that 100 countries, among its 184 member countries across the world, and employs over 10,000 people, of which 3,000 in local offices.
The World Bank is made of five organizations, composing the World Bank Group, namely: The International Bank for reconstruction and Development (IBRD); The International Development Association (IDA); The International Finance Corporation (IFC); The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA); and the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
The Bank works as a cooperative, where its 185 member countries are shareholders, represented by a Board of Governors (ministers of finance or ministers of development). The Governors elect a total of 24 Executive Directors, who are delegated by the countries to approve loans, new policies,administrative budget, country assistance strategies and borrowing and financial decisions.
The five largest shareholders, specifically France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, appoint one Executive Director each, while other member countries are represented by 19 Executive Directors. African countries are represented by two Executive Directors.
The President of the World Bank Group chairs meetings of the Executive Directors and is responsible for the overall management of the Bank. By tradition, the Bank's president is a U.S. national and is nominated by the United States, the Bank's largest shareholder.
What we do:
When it was conceived in 1944, its main mission was to rebuild a devastated World War II Europe. To date, reconstruction, and specifically infrastructure development, still counts for a large share of its development aid. However, the Bank has evolved over the years and presently its work focuses on the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, which is an attempt by the international community to eliminate poverty and set the stage for a sustained development.
The World Bank overall mission is the fight against poverty in development nations. It works on a wide range of development topics including on Infrastructure, Health, Education, Agriculture and Rural Development, Private Sector, Public Sector, Governance and Financial Management, and Environment,
among others.
Where we work:
The World Bank focus its attention on fighting poverty in the developing world across the regions, from Asia, to Africa, from Latin America, Europe to Middle-East. In Mozambique, the World Bank activities span from investment lending and non-lending activities, including technical assistance and knowledge transfer, to all major development sectors mentioned above, with an overall disbursement averaging $150-200 million a year, and about a $billion of committed funds.
For more information:
Country Representative: Michael Baxter, Country Director for Mozambique,
Angola, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Contacts: mbaxter@worldbank.org