Development AidA Perspective on the Sustainability of World Bank Projects

This paper focuses on the evaluation of the World Bank (W B) performance in delivering development aid to the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). For this purpose, an extensive research was performed to analyze a set of 790 Implementation Completion and Results reports for sustainability outcomes. Results of this research provide various insights on sustainability ratings of project delivery of the LDCs and the African and Asian continent, whereas overall satisfying sustainability ratings are disclosed.


Introduction to the Topic
During the last two centuries global prosperity has accelerated and each generation has been encouraged to meet new challenges to "make the world better" by lifting up hu man well-being.Nevertheless, the picture is not promising everywhere.St ill today about three million people live on less than two dollars a day, more than eight hundred million don't have enough to eat, about ten million children die every year fro m diseases which could be easily prevented, AIDS is killing close to three million people a year, one billion lack access to clean water and some two billion people lack access to sanitation.Furthermore, about one billion adults are still illiterate and about 25 percent of the children in poor countries don't finish primary school. 1 According to experts there are ten significant challenges within the global poverty context: air pollution, conflict, disease, global warming, education, sanitation and water, malnutrit ion and hunger, trade barriers and subsidies, wo men and development and terroris m. 2 To address global poverty problems and to help the poorest billion to improve their situations, particularly in the last decades many development aid organizations and so called human aid institutions have arisen. 3e new millenniu m offered prospective hope in solving global prosperity problems through emerging technologies as part of the ongoing IT boom and the continued economic progress in China, India, and Russia.Although Africa was still in a miserable crisis, a spread of democracy th roughout the continent took place and the possibility of activating processes to use new technologies to fight different diseases gave hope.The most vivid reflect ion of this was the Millenniu m Assembly which took place at the United Nations in New York.I t was the largest coming together of world leaders in history with 147 heads of state and government.For this occasion, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan presented the document "We the Peoples: The Ro le of the Un ited Nations in the 21 st Century", laying out a critical view of the global challenges of our time, such as extreme poverty, environmental damage, major d isease problems, civil conflicts and war.This docu ment became the basis for the Millenniu m Declaration which sets forth a series of t ime -bound and quantified goals, the Millenniu m Develop ment Goals (M DGs).4

Assessing Poverty Problems, Achieving Economic Growth, Reaching MDGs
The problem of how to end poverty in our world has been widely discussed throughout literature, whereas most of all the research indicates that those countries affected are caught in a ''poverty trap.''A co mbination of poor geography, health care and infrastructure prevent some societies fro m generating any economic surplus (this is especially the case for Sub-Saharan Africa).To help such countries make the first step on the economic ladder of development, far more aid assistance from "rich world countries" as well as debt forgiveness, better trade terms and access to good technologies need to be ensured.This is generally referred as the "top-down" approach for economic assistance.Jeffery D. Sachs can be regarded as a main driver of this approach.However, there are also other important supporters, such as Paul Co llier. 5ere are also some opposers who don't believe in any "utopian" top-down approach.William Easterly is a well-known proponent among those who believe that helping the poor is only possible through simple and cost-effective uses of foreign aid such as dietary supplements (e.g.vitamins, in fant formu la, and iodine), fertilizer subsidies, education in sexual pract ices (using condoms) and urban water provision. 6yond these comparative opinions of how foreign aid assistance should be applied, there has been an emergence of new "contra foreign aid" opinionsfirst advocated by Dambisa Moyo with her book "Dead Aid" pursuing that economic growth and a significant decline in poverty can be achieved without reliance on foreign aid or aid-related assistance. 7 a nutshell, one has to admit that an "easy-to-reach" solution cannot be achieved in the short run due to the complexity of the poverty problem. 8ill, there are some co mmon ideas and agreements on how to start immediately with foreign aid solutions, regardless of the opposing opinions on how to apply Official Develop ment Assistance (ODA) most efficiently :9 11 To ensure that the MDGs can be achieved and to put a realistic plan into place, the UN Millenniu m Project was founded in 2002.The project was engaged by 250 central g lobal expert participants who represented each part of the entire UN system (WHO, UNICEF, the Food and Agriculture Organization, The United Nat ions Environ ment Program, etc.).In order to estimate the total amount of foreign aid available through the MDGs, each country must first offer a detailed costing plan based on the Millenniu m Project methodology.This has been outlined by a minimu m amount of $135 to $195 billion US Dollars per year for the period of 2005 through 2015 (this is about 0.44 to 0.54 percent of the rich-world GNP each year).Based on the official calculations fro m 2005/ 06 and the MDGs Su mmit outcome in 2010, th is means that ODA would need to be mo re than doubled for the majority of the Least Developed Countries12 (LDCs) to reach the MDGs and for poverty to be halved by 2015. 13e most disappointing results in solving extreme poverty can be observed in Africa.While some of the North African states will be able to halve poverty on time most of the Sub -Saharan African countries (known as Black Africa) will not, although an average economic per capita gro wth rate14 of 3.3% still exists. 15n this context, questions such as these have been introduced into the global poverty discussion: 16  Why are still so many countries failing to achieve economic success?
 What can Western-aid offer and how does it need to be delivered to achieve long -term prosperity in developing countries?
 How sustainable are the outcomes of development assistance projects?
Aiming to answer the last question, the proposed paper will focus on analyzing the sustainability of develop ment assistance projects lead by the World Bank within the LDCs.

Research Approach
In this chapter, the research idea among relevant terms, defin itions, and methods will be provided and exp lained.

Research Idea
The idea o f this research paper is to access the sustainability outcome of all World Bank projects wh ich have been conducted and finalized within any LDC after the passage of the MDGs.The paper therefore aims to evaluate the sustainability of outcomes after pro ject co mpletion to discover the main reasons for a low likelihood of sustainability based on the latest data publicly availab le.Hereby, these reasons will be accessed and compared across the LDCs at large, as well as among the LDC continents individually.Therefore, a quantitative analysis to count the "positive" and "negative" sustainability ratings within the relevant Implementation Co mpletion and Results Reports (ICR) across the LDCs will be conducted in the first stage.Thereafter, a classical content analysis will be applied in the second stage to find out the reasons for a "negative" sustainability rating and the underlying types of projects associated.Lastly, there will be a continen t comparison and short excursus on the negative sustainability projects that of which disclose a positive Net Present Value17 (NPV) at project complet ion.This paper will close with a short summary and conclusion of findings fro m the research conducted.

Implementation Completion and Results Reports
The ICR is one of the main instruments of self-evaluation and serves as an integral part to increase develop ment effectiveness of the World Bank. Provide accountability and transparency at the project level while considering the bank, bo rrower and involved stakeholders the causal relationships in various studies because aid is given in many different forms and for a lot of different purposes.Moreover, 40 studies showed a statistically positive impact of aid on growth.This shows that the majority of case studies have proven that foreign economic development assistance can affect economic results positively. 15Cf.Calderisi (2006), p. 2 et sqq.; Collier (2008),p.3 et sqq.; Schabbel (2006), p. 114; Wolff (2005), unpag. 16Cf.Ahrens (2005), unpag.;Easterley (2006), p. 24; Köhler et al. (1996), unpag.
 Provide an instrument for realistic self -evaluation of performance by the bank and borrowers (government and imp lementation agency)  Contribute to databases for analysis and reporting, especially by the Quality Assurance Gro up (QA G) and the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG)20 on the effectiveness of development assistance in contributing to development strategies at the various levels (sector, country, and global).
The audience for the ICR is both internal (e.g. board members , bank managers and staff) and external (governments and their agencies, stakeholders, and beneficiaries in partner countries, as well as the general public).In general, the final ICR is publicly disclosed at the time it is submitted within the World Bank and to the board.21

Project Types
In order to have a co mmon basis for co mparing project outcomes in Africa and Asia, a study on the available project types needed to be conducted.The classification of project types is based and defined as "Sector a nd Theme Codes" within the ICR documents.Each project can consist of mu ltiple "sector codes" (up to 5 in total) that determine the project type for the project funding provided by the WB.As illustrated in the following table, for each sector type a percentage is used to indicate how much of WB funding allocated to the project had been planned at the appraisal stage ("Original" colu mn) and actually d isbursed at project co mpletion ("Actual" column):  In this example the planned WB financing per sector code has been estimated as actually disbursed.

Data Access and Relevance
The research data used for this paper was obtained fro m ICR docu ments published by the World Bank on the World Bank Ho mepage.The audiences of th is data set are governments, beneficiaries amongst individual countries and around the globe as well as the general public.The in itial data load was conducted in September of 2012.The 49 LDCs respectively their country documents (type: spreadsheet) contained links to around 30,500 documentsabout 2,000 o f which being ICR docu mentsof roughly 5,500 p rojects.To narrow down the research data basis and to maintain focus on specific relevance, this paper only references ICR documents that have been released after the MDGs have been officially passed (9/8/2000). 24In principle, the idea is to evaluate if the majority of ICR documents disclose key figures and ratings in order to support the assessment of the country's progress towards achieving the MDGs as requested by the UN and outlined in each country's Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS).Therefo re, this paper was conducted from research of 790 ICR documents among all of the LDCs.25

Definition of ICR Sustainability Rating
Looking at the sustainability rating within an ICR document, one must not be confused with the "three-pillar model" of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). 26A sustainability rating of an ICR describes the 'Risk to Develop ment Outcome' as "the risk, at the time o f evaluation, that development outcomes (or expected outcomes) will not be maintained (o r realized).This refers to outcomes that have actually been achieved (or are expected to be achieved)." 27In princip le, the risk to develop ment outcome has 2 dimensions:28 1) The likelihood that some changes may occur fro m the operation that are detrimental to the ultimate achievement of the development outcome.
2) The impact fro m the operation and the development outcomes if so me or all of these changes materialize.
There are internal risks primarily related to the operation itself and external risks which arise fro m factors outside of the project (e.g. at the country or global level).The sustainability rating helps to identify those operations that require a close monitoring and controlling process in managing ris ks which may affect project outcome and benefits.Therefore, rating ICR sustainability requires an assessment of uncertainties, which the operation might face over its remain ing useful lifetime, and whether adequate measures and arrangements are in place to mitigate or even avoid the impact of those uncertainties.Defined by the WB, the ICR sustainability rating is the "evaluator's judgment of the uncertainties faced by the operation's development out-comes over its expected remaining useful life, taking account of any risk mitigation measures already in place at the t ime of evaluation." 29 30e ICR sustainability rat ing is 1 of 3 major rat ing categories that describe the overall pro ject performance of an operation or project as the following graphic illustrates:31  It is worth noting that the sustainability rating does not give an indication about the abs olute level of project benefits.For example, a pro ject may have a positive NPV or a high expected ERR and a low sustainability rat ing, still resulting in a satisfactory project overall performance rating. 33 order to establish the most adequate and reliable assessment of a sustainability rat ing, the evaluator and its team (main ly project staff and ICR W B employees) must consider operational, sector, and country -specific related issues by weighing in the relative importance of each individualized criterion of a risk and how it may affect the planned project outcomethese risk factors include: 34 Based on the outcome of the research conducted 2 major findings need to be outlined: 1) In ICR documents disclosed before mid-200536 , rating category 'Risk to Develop ment Outcome' was assessed (and named) as 'Sustainability' and thus has controversial rating categories.
2) Besides the above rating categories suggested by the WB, other rating categories have been used for the 'Risk to Develop ment Outco me' category, such as substantial, med iu m, and modest.
To account for these findings and to build the foundation for the content analysis, mapping of the rat ings and categories was performed and is illustrated in the table below.With in the context of this research paper only negative rating categories are researched using the content analysis: 37 Go ing forward both categories will be referred as 'Sustainability' whereas "Unlikely" and "Highly Unlikely" will be used as rating category types containing as well the "Significant" and "High" 'Risk to Develop ment Outcome' rating category types.

Content Analysis
Content analysis is a research tool used to determine the presence of certain words or concepts within texts or sets of texts.Researchers quantify and analyze the presence, meanings and relationships of words and concepts before making inferences about the messages within the texts.To conduct a content analysis the text is coded, or broken down into manageable pieces and categories on a variety of levels, such as words, word senses, phrases, sentences, or themes. 38In p rinciple, there are t wo comp lementary types of content analysis:39  Conceptual Analysis (quantitative): Analyzing the existence and frequency of concepts which are used the most within the text.
 Relational Analysis (qualitative): Analy zing the relationship among concepts within the text.

Outcome and Results
The following chapters analyze the outcome of the sustainability rat ings of the LDCs.In the next chapter the quantitative counts of the negative, neutral and positive sustainability rat ings are assessed.Thereafter, the outcome of the content analysis for the negative sustainability projects is presented.For this purpose, results of the LDCs, the ones for Hait i followed by the outcome co mp arison of the African and Asian continents, are examined.The chapter will continue with an excursus on the results of positive NPV pro jects, before a su mmary and conclusion finalize this section.

Quantitative Assessment of Sustainability Ratings
In order to assess the quantitative number of negative, neutral and positive sustainability ratings, each ICR document had to be reviewed individually as the rating categories are not yet available in any other format nor have they been published anywhere els e by the WB. 40ble 3 provides an overview of the neutral and positive sustainability ratings for the LDCs per continent, whereat the ratings related to the risk to development outcome category have been added to the corresponding sustainability rating category in order to provide a comprehensive summary (same mapping approach as for the negative sustainability rat ing; refer to chapter 3.5 Definition of ICR Sustainability Rating ): Latin America (Hai ti) 3 0 Approx.20 percent (160 out of 790) of all ICR documents disclose a neutral rating for sustainability, such as modest or moderate.On a global level, 364 out of 790 (46.1 percent) projects exh ibit a positive rating.Interestingly enough, Asia contains approx.the same nu mber o f projects with positive and negative sustainability ratings (roughly 80 pro jects).On the contrary, Hait i does not even disclose 1 project with a positive rat ing.In Africathe continent where most projects have been executednearly half of the projects (about 48 percent) received a positive rating for sustainability.
In conclusion, it can be adhered that these WB projects are rather sustainable in terms of having a positive likelihood that the project outcome will be sustained after project closing, as there are mo re positive than negative ratings available.
Table 4 provides an overview of the negative sustainability rat ings per continent as well as per category: When broken down by percentages, the "Highly Un likely" sustainability rating makes up about 20 percent of the total negative sustainability rat ings.In Africa, 17 percent of the negative sustainability projects have a "Highly Unlikely" rat ing.In Asia about 22 percent account for this rating.In Hait i 4 out of 10 pro jects disclose this negative sustainability rat ing.
As a summary it must be outlined that in total 33.3 percent of the projects analyzed have an "Un likely" or "Highly Unlikely" sustainability rat ing (30.3 percent in Africa, 39.8 percent in Asia).
However, it must be noted that the sustainability rating may always be subject to change due to any reasons which might not have been foreseen during the rating period -more than likely resulting in a positive rat ing moving towards a more negative rating rather than the other way around. 42

Content Analyses
In order to evaluate the reasons why achieved project outcomes might not be sustained after project complet ion with a "significant" or even "high" negative sustainability rating, classical content analyses were conducted using ATLAS.ti.The following chapters outline the results of the content analyses per continent.

Types of Reasons
In order to assess the types of reasons for negative sustainability ratings within the LDCs as a whole, each sustainability ICR report was researched using the qualitative toolset of content analysis.The following table provides an overview of the existing types of reasons which were identified across all LDCs: Macroeconomic or country risks affect the country as a whole and can be due to external/global reasons, such as a financial crisis.Govern mental risks relate to the government itself, its (lack of) co mmit ment, its (lack o f) actions and its limited capacity43 (e.g.resources).The third type of reason for a negative rating in sustainability is political risks, such as political instability or uncertainty with in the country perhaps due to upcoming elections.Another group of risks identified are security riskssub-divided by natural disaster and environmental risks, war and conflicts, epidemic risks, and thirst and hunger.The fifth category of reasoning is corruption which is still a major issue in the LDCs.Following this, fiduciary risks, imp lementation capacity and institutional risks, and infrastructure risks are 3 addit ional reasons mentioned.Lastly, pro ject specific risks such as PDO risks (which directly have an impact on the project's PDOs), implementation agency risks, bank risks, technical risks, and other project risks make up the final reasoning in this assessment. 44

Overall Results
Looking at the LDCs as a whole (including Hait i), 33.3 percent have a negative outcome for the sustainability rating (263 out of 790 projects).Out of the 263 projects, 212 projects have an "Unlikely" rating and 51 have a "Highly Unlikely" rating for sustainability (refer to chapter 4. The "% of Pro jects" column represents the percentages of the risk category in co mparison to the 263 negative sustainability projects, whereat the "% of total projects" shows the share in regards to the total of 790 p rojects.The majority of reasoning for the LDCs to share a negative sustainability rat ing lies behind fiduciary risks (54.8 percent), whereat this affects about 18 percent of all WB p rojects researched in the context of the LDCs.More than 50 percent of the negative sustainability rated projects have imp lementation capacity and institutional risks, close to 50 percent have project-related risks, specifically in areas of PDO and imp lementation agency.Furthermore, nearly 45 percent of the negative projects today are assessed with governmental risks, followed closely by security risks at 30 percent (roughly 20 percent of these being d ue to war and conflict).Interestingly, corruption and political risks are still 2 types of risks which affect more than 20 percent of the negative sustainability projects, whereat infrastructure risks represent the smallest type of reasoning with a share of 8.7 percent only.
Out of 263 negative sustainability projects across the LDCs there are 81 sector codes available in total.The 'Central government admin istration' sector code counts about 54 %-points and is thus the largest shared among sector codes (about 20 percent).It belongs to 148 out of the 263 total negative sustainability projects.The 'Health' sector code counts approx.27 %-points and has a share of roughly 10 percent, accounting for 61 projects.Other majo r sector codes to be noted are 'Other social services', 'Power', 'Roads and highways', as well as water supply.
In order to better understand for wh ich type of p rojects the negative sustainability pro ject accounts, following %-shares for the project type categories can be outlined: Another 46 p rojects can be grouped into smaller project groups sharing at least the same sector codes per grou p, whereat in none of the project groups the %-points per sector code match. 49Therefore, it can be concluded that besides the 29 projects mentioned in the table above, the rest of the 188 projects do not have matching sector codes and therefore have different project types.In order to increase the probability of finding patterns t hat can explain relat ionship between certain sector codes, their %-points and the effect on the sustainability rating, a detailed statistical analysis is required.A samp le analysis of roughly about 100 negative sustainability projects has shown that the WB costs account for only less than 40 percent of the total project costs .Therefore, further in-depth statistical analyses could only be conducted after the sector codes of the total project funding are known.
As an outcome of this analysis it needs to be noted that the project types of the negative sustainability pro jects of the LDCs:  Are based on 81 different sector codes but not representative for the total funding amount of those projects.
 Vary ext remely and are rarely the same across projects/countries.
 Can only serve as "trend-setters" due to the mentioned limitations.

Results in Haiti
Hait i is the only country within LA that belongs to the LDCs and therefore not representative for LA as a continent.Nevertheless, as outlined in in chapter 4.1 Quantitative Assessment of Sustainability Ratings, table 3: Quantitative Assessment of Neutral and Positive Sustainability Ratings it contains 10 ICR docu ments out of which 7 do have a negative sustainability rat ing. 50The following table is provided to highlight the top reasons for receiving "Un likely" and "Highly Un likely" sustainability ratings in Haiti by comparing the percentages of negative projects per reasoning type to all negative sustainability projects ("% of Projects") and in relat ion to all (10) projects ("% of total Pro jects") with in the country:  According to the research conducted, the major reasons for a negative sustainability outcome in Haiti are implementation capacity and institutional risks, political risks, and macroeconomic risks, followed by 3 additional types, security, fiduciary and governmental risks, with equal shares.

Continent Co mparison
In this chapter, the outcome of the content analyses of Africa and Asia are presented and compared. 52 Africa, 30 percent of the projects outline a negative outcome for the sustainability rating (174 out of 574).Out of the 174 projects, 145 pro jects have an "Unlikely" wh ile 29 disclose a "Highly Un likely" rat ing for sustainability. 53The following table provides an overview of the major reasons for a negative sustainability rating within Africa (174 to count) co mpared to the total number of pro jects researched within the continent (574 in total; refer to colu mn "% of total Projects").The co mparison is bas ed on the comb ination of both negative sustainability ratings ("Unlikely" and "Highly Unlikely"): The major issues in terms of making pro ject outcomes in Africa sustainable are fiduciary risks (60.3 percent), especially due to lack of donor funding, whereat a donor could be the government or loans or grants fro m external sources.Project-related risks (50 percent) represent the secondary majority of reas oning in Africa, directly fo llo wed by implementation capacity and institutional risks (49.2 percent).Govern mental risks (40 percent) and macroeconomic or country risks (30 percent) account for the last majority of reasoning for negative sustainability projects.
In Asia, roughly 40 percent of the projects receive a negative outcome for the sustainability rat ing (82 out of 206 projects), wherein the bulk of these projects (64 in total) has an "Unlikely" rat ing for sustainability and only 18 ICR reports receive a "High ly Un likely" sustainability rat ing. 55The following table is provided to present the major reasons for the negative sustainability rating for projects within Asia (82 to count), showing comparison against the corresponding total percentage of ICR reports of Asia as a basis (206 in total; refer to column "% of total Projects"): Interestingly, the 3 leading reasons (imp lementation capacity/institutional risks at 62.2 percent, project -related risks at 62.2 percent, and governmental risks at 56.1 percent) account for far more than 50 percent of the negative sustainability projects.Furthermo re, it can be stated that about every fourth project executed in Asia is facing either implementation capacity/institutional or project risks.Additionally, governmental risks and fiduciary risks account for more than 50 percent of the negative ICR reports, affecting at least every fifth project in Asia.Security risks such as war and conflict make up the third type of reason with about 40 percent of the negative sustainability rat ings.
In order to allow for a direct comparison of the 2 continents the results outlined above are summarized in the following table: The table above reflects 2 major points of interest: 1) Based on the risk assessment for Asia, the percentage numbers for the total number of projects ("% of total Projects" column) within the continent are considerably higher for 8 out of the 9 major risk types than that in Africa.The only risk type where Africa shows a slightly higher percentage number than Asia is macroeconomics.Therefore, it can be concluded that the likelihood for project outcomes to not be maintained after pro ject co mpletion is generally h igher in Asia than in Africa.
2) Perhaps contrary to common belief, corruption is indicated to be the lowest risk type for both continents.Therefore, it can be concluded that corruption is not a major risk in affecting the sustainability of the development outcome of a project.A deeper look into the projects reveals that corruption typically affects projects at the beginning when arrangements are first made and money transfers a re agreed. 57ile fiduciary or funding-related risks have the highest percentage of all risks in Africa (60.3 percent), it is only the third-or fourth-ranked risk (being that there are 2 first-ranked risks) in Asia with close to 8 percent less than that in Africa (52 percent).The 2 primary risks for Asia, namely project risks and imp lementation capacity/institutional risks (both at 62.2 percent) are closely matched by that in Africa (second -ranked project risks at 50 percent and third-ranked imp lementation capacity/institutional risks at 49.4 percent).Fiduciary risks remain a high risk within both continents.However, risks related to the government (its associated commit ment and actions) have been assessed with a 14 percent variance (ranked second in Asia at 56.1 percent and fourth in Africa with about 42.5 percent).A potential exp lanation could be inferred, i.e. due to the higher occurrence of other risks within Asia (e.g.security risks), the governmental support has suffered (note: this has not been validated with in this study).Macroeconomic/country risks are ran ked as the top fifth risk in Africa (appro x. 30 percent), unlike its ranking in Asia (21 percent).The largest difference between the 2 continents can be found looking at the security risk which is among the top 5 risks for Asia (41.5 percent) and about 19 percent higher than that for Africa (23 percent).An explanation of this variance can be found looking at Afghanistan specifically which accounts for about 27 percent of the negative sustainability projects (22 out of 82 projects received "Unlikely" (12) and "Highly Unlikely" (10) sustainability ratings).Due to the fact that the country has been plagued by conflicts, wars and political instability for many years, almost all of the 22 pro jects outline that security within the country might potentially affect the project development outcome and thus increase the security risk for Asia when co mparing continents at large.
In summary, the 4 h ighest-ranked risks in Asia are shared differently in Africa (imp lementation capacity/institutional risks, project risks, governmental risks, and security risks).The 2 types of risk in Africa shown to be (slightly) higher in percentage than that in Asia are macroeconomic and fiduciary.
To conclude those findings, it again needs to be mentioned that the total negative sustainability projects in Asia are in average mo re often affected by any risk type or by a co mbination of mu lt iple risk types.In general, this indicates that projects in Asia run worse in term of sustainability, or vice -versa, projects in Africa have a better adoption of development aid in term of making project outcomes more sustainable.
In order to account for the high number of various sector codes and to consolidate findings, the sector codes were grouped by similarity to different project type categories.The following table provides a continental comparison of the %-share per project type category:58  Even though no research on the total W B costs of the negative sustainability projects was conducted differences in the project type categories per continent can be found.The largest variance in sector codes between the 2 continents can be found in the 'Health' project type category with roughly 10 percent more in Africa.In total, the health-related sector codes grouped under the 'Health' project type category affect 54 African projects compared to 7 Asian projects.Additionally, 2 further but respectively minor d ifferences can be found in the 'Water and Sanitation' and the 'Agriculture' groupings: A variance of about 6.5 percent more for the 'Water and Sanitation' as well as the 'Sectorial Development and Reforming' project type category in Asia.All other categories show differences with percentages of lower than 5 percent and therefore have not been explored any further.
In order to fu rther exp lain continental d ifferences and to determine if any of the above mentioned project type categories account for an ext remity in specific risk types, separate code reviews per project type category -using only project type category relevant projects-were conducted.Appendix L provides a co mparison analysis of risk types and their corresponding percentage of distribution over all African negative sustainability pro jects and specific African health-related projects.Fiduciary risks affected roughly about 75 percent of all health related projects in Africawhich is 15 percent more than compared to all negative sustainability projects in Africa.Besides this, no noteworthy results were found.Controlling vice versa -looking at Asian health-related category projects-only provided "insignificant" d ifferences (lower than 5 percent) when co mpared to the entirety of negative sustainability projects in Asia.Furthermore, analyses of the 'Water and Sanitation', 'Sectorial Develop ment and Reforming', 'Agriculture' and 'Education' project type categories resulted as well in insignificant differences (lower than 5 percent) for any risk type in either continent.Therefore, it must be summarized that even though some sector codes varied between the 2 continents, the research on varying sector codes in respect to their defined project types did not provide any further insights to the differences of continental risk types in general.The potential reasoning for this might be ly ing in the reference to the amount of the WB financing which is comparably low to the overall p roject funding.

Excursus: Positive NPV Projects
In this chapter, negative sustainability p rojects of the LDCs that outline a positive NPV are analy zed.The goal is to find out if there are specific types of risks wh ich cause a negative sustainability for projects with a positive NPV at pro ject closure.Therefore, each of the 263 negative sustainability reports was searched for positive project NPV values at project comp letions. 59The following table provides an overview of the negative sustainability projects within the LDCs, categorized per continent and by category rating type: On a LDC level, about 15 percent of the negative sustainability ICR documents (39 out of 263) expose a positive NPV.The h ighest share (34 p rojects) can be found in the "Un likely" sustainability rating.Interestingly, the share as well as the absolute number of the negative sustainability ratings of the positive NPV projects in Asia (40 percent (20 out of 50 pro jects)) is higher than that in Africa (18 percent (19 out of 104 pro jects)) although Africa counts more than double of the negative sustainability p rojects (174 pro jects compared to that of Asia with 82 negative sustainability projects in total) as well as double of positive NPV p rojects (104 co mpared to that 50 positive NPV p rojects in Asia).Th is outcome basically underlines the results of the previous chapter: Asian projects are generally mo re affected by any risk type negatively influencing the future maintenance of project outcomes than African pro jects, whereat this effect appears to be even stronger for positive NPV pro jects.
The follo wing table co mpares the overall outcome amongst the LDCs' projects with the evaluated risk types in relationship to the percentage of negative sustainability pro jects containing a positive NPV: The largest variance relates to corruption and shows that negative sustainability pro jects with a positive NPV are 19 percent less affected than the total of negative sustainability projects and thus only show a negligib le effect of 2.6 percent in total.Furthermore, negative sustainability projects with a positive NPV are appro x. 15 percent less affected by governmental risks.On the other hand negative sustainability projects with a positive NPV seem to be more affected by in frastructure risks at 20.5 percent co mpared to 8.7 percent of the total of negative sustainability projects.Aside fro m this, there are 2 more noteworthy variances with less than 10 percent difference: On the one hand negative sustainability pro jects with a positive NPV are 9.5 percent less affected by macroeconomic risks but roughly 7 percent more affected by fiduciary risks than the total of negative sustainability projects.

Summary
Fiduciary was the primary risk relating to 54.8 percent of the negative sustainability projects, representing roughly 20 percent of all WB pro jects researched in the context of the LDCs.These were followed by the implementation capacity risks, and thereafter, by project specific risks.Corruption was the single type of risk which affected the least number o f projects, fo llo wed by infrastructure and political risks.
Co mparing the risk types of the Asian and the African continents showed various differences .In general, Asian projects were mo re often affected by any type of risk.When directly compared, the main 2 differences between the continents were found in the governmental and security risk types.For both risk types, negative sustainability projects in Asia showed 15 or mo re %-points.An explanation for the governmental differences could be the higher occurrence of other risks causing governments to be overwhelmed and therefore ineffective.The differences in the security risk type found in Afghanistan are due to the fact that the country has been in a war situation for several years.
When controlling for project types the major variance was found in the health -related pro ject types.In this context, fiduciary risks showed to be the only noticeable difference affecting 75 percent of the negative sustainability health-related projects in Africa, whereat no noteworthy detection for Asia was found.Furthermore, it was concluded thatbased on the research conductedno other significant relat ionship was found amongst the minor differences within the continental project types and their associated risk types.
The excursus on the negative sustainability projects outlining a positive NPV showed that those projects are in principle not affected by corruption wh ich was 19 percent lo wer co mparing to that of the total of negative sustainability projects (refer to chapter 4.3 Excursus: Positive NPV Projects).Furthermore, negative sustainability projects with a positive NPV were also approx.15 percent less affecte d by governmental risks, whereat on the other hand they seemed to be more affected by infrastructure risks at 20.5 percent comparing to 8.7 percent of the total of negative sustainability pro jects.

Conclusion and Outlook
To ensure a higher sustainability after project co mpletion and to cope for the discovered risks and their respective underlying factors various reco mmendations need to be considered.With fiduciary being the major risk affecting sustainability, this paper is in line with the generally st ated need that far more aid assistance from rich countries as well as debt forgiveness and better trade terms are needed.Looking at imp lementation capacity as the second major risk to sustainability, donor countries and their respective development aid in stitutions need to ensure access to new and appropriate technologies to the LDCs.There is as well a need to provide more guidance, support and training to the respective imp lementation agencies and the staff on the ground.In regards to governmental risks the UN needs to get a better understanding of how to provide a more adequate assistance to support the governmental processes and tasks, such as the establishment of regulatory rules and laws, project prioritization, money distribution, and community support.With respect to security risks it is difficu lt to make a judgment.As outlined earlier, war and conflicts are actually "burning" money, since governmental priorities for allocating donor aid change dramatically.Especially in such conflict -environ ments, help and support of external sources is more than ever required to stabilize the situation with in the country.Therefo re, the WB might need to establish a framework which allo ws prioritizing, transferring and handling development aid better within the context of war-and conflict-affected countries.A start could be the re-evaluation of the country's PRS together with the government itself.
To gain fu rther insights why certain pro jects have a negative overall project rating, the bank as well as the borrower performance will need to be researched further.This table shows the reasons for "Un likely" and "Highly Unlikely" sustainability ratings based on 3 respectively 4 projects.

Appendi x I
Reasons for " Unlikely" and " Highly Unlikely" Sustainability in Africa This table shows the reasons for "Unlikely" and "Highly Un likely" sustainability rat ings in Africa.

Appendi x J
Reasons for " Unlikely" and " Highly Unlikely" Sustainability in Asia This table shows the reasons for "Unlikely" and "Highly Un likely" sustainability rat ings in Asia.This illustration shows the outcome o f the sector codes mapped to project type categories.For each o f the sector codes respectively project types the %-share based on the corresponding %-points is given.

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Pro motion of understanding ODA as a subsidy  Grants instead of loans  Differentiated diagnoses according to the country specific needs by shifting fro m supply to demand focus  Co mpetitive advantages and accountabilities of aid agencies Furthermore, the MDGs have been agreed in unison by the 191 UN member states UN-member states that culminated in the signing the Un ited Nat ions Millenniu m Declaration in 2002.In principle, those goals stand for the main ob jectives of our time to solve the world's poverty problems and gain global prosperity.The MDGs consist of the following eight goals: 10  Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger  Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education  Goal 3: Pro mote gender equality and empower wo men  Goal 4: Reduce child mo rtality  Goal 5: Imp rove maternal health  Goal 6: Co mbat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases  Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability  Goal 8: Develop a Global Partnership for Develop ment Today the eight MDGs are broken down into 21 quantifiab le targets that are measured by 60 indicators.

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18  Reports are prepared by the World Bank itself at each pro ject closing respectively at the close of every International Develop ment Association (IDA) or International Ban k for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD)-funded operation containing major financial figures, such as the NPV and the Economic Rate of Return 19 (ERR).On top of that the ICR assesses to which degree the Pro ject Develop ment Objectives (PDO) have been achieved by providing outcome ratings for different project categories, such as Bank Performance, Borrower Performance, Sustainability respectively Risk to Develop ment Outcome.Furthermore, the ICR represents a continuous process of self-evaluation, lessons learned, knowledge sharing and being accountable for results.The following list provides the main intention of the ICR and its system: Provide a co mplete account of the performance and results of each project and operation  Capture and dispose experience fro m previous projects in order to: a) improve future interventions to achieve the goals of the Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) b) improve the design and imp lementation of up-coming operations through lessons learned and c) ensure a greater development impact and sustainability for these future operations

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Pro ject overall perfo rmance categories of poorest quintile in national consumption Target 1.B: Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people 1.4 Growth rate of GDP per person employed 1.5 Employment -to-population ratio 1.6 Proportion of employed people living below $1 per day 1.7 Proportion of own-account and contributing family workers in total employment Target 1.C: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger 1.8 Prevalence of underweight children under-five years of age 1.9 Proportion of population below minimum level of dietary energy consumption Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education Target 2.A: Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling 2.1 Net enrolment ratio in primary education 2.2 Proportion of pupils starting grade 1 who reach last grade of primary 2.3 Literacy rate of 15-24 year-olds, women and men Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women Target 3.A: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015 3.1 Ratios of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education 3.2 Share of women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector 3.3 Proportion of seats held by women in nat ional parliament Goal 4: Reduce child mortality Target 4.A: Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 4.1 Under-five mortality rate 2015, the under-five mortality rate 4care coverage (at least one visit and at least four visits) 5.6 Unmet need for family planning Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases Target 6.A: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS 6.1 HIV prevalence among population aged 15-24 years 6.2 Condom use at last high-risk sex 6.3 Proportion of population aged 15-24 years with comprehensive correct knowledge of HIV/AIDS 6.4 Ratio of school attendance of orphans to school attendance of non-orphans aged 10-14 years Target 6.B: Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it 6.5 Proportion of population with advanced HIV infection with access to antiretroviral drugs Target 6.C: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases 6.6 Incidence and death rates associated with malaria 6.7 Proportion of children under 5 sleeping under insecticide-treated bednets 6.8 Proportion of children under 5 with fever who are treated with appropriate anti-malarial drugs 6.9 Incidence, prevalence and death rates associated with tuberculosis 6.10 Proportion of tuberculosis cases detected and cured under directly observed treatment short course Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability Target 7.A: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources Target 7.B: Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss 7.1 Proportion of land area covered by forest 7.2 CO2 emissions, total, per capita and per $1 GDP 7.3 Consumption of ozone-depleting substances 7.4 Proportion of fish stocks within safe biological limits 7.5 Proportion of total water resources used 7.6 Proportion of terrestrial and marine areas protected 7.7 Proportion of species threatened with extinction Target 7.C: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation 7.8 Proportion of population using an improved drinking water source 7.9 Proportion of population using an improved sanitation facility Target 7.D: By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers 7.10 Proportion of urban population living in slums Goal 8: De velop a global partnership for development 22

Table 1 .
Examp le of a p roject type definit ion23

Table 3 .
Quantitative assessment of neutral and positive sustainability ratings 41

Table 4 .
Quantitative assessment of negative sustainability ratings

Table 5 .
Identified reasons for a negative sustainability rat ing

Table 6 .
1 Quantitative Assessment of Sustainability Ratings, table 3: Quantitative Assessment of Negative Sustainability Ratings).The following table highlights the major reasons for negative sustainability ratings within the LDCs compared against the t otal number o f 790 projects researched within this paper: Top reasons for a negative sustainability rating across LDCs 45

Table 7 .
Most common sector codes across negative sustainability projects of the LDCs 47 Table 7 represents the 10 most common sector codes across the negative sustainability LDC pro jects, whereat the %-points and the %-share are given based on the project type definition already presented in chapter 3.3 Project Types (refer to table 1: Example of a Project Type Definition): 46

Table 8 .
Project type categories of the negative sustainability projects of the LDCs 48

Project Type Categ ory LDCs % -Share
The 'Govern mental Admin istration' project type represents the major p roject type of the negative sustainability projects of the LDCs with a share of about 23 percent.Additional major pro ject types are 'Health' (12.41 percent) and 'Transportation Development' (10.98 percent).Out of the 263 projects there are only a few p rojects which share t he same sector codes.In most cases only 2 projects share the same sector code(s), whereat most of the time projects are based on 1 sector code only.In the latter case, the %-point is 1 and the same for both projects.The following table provides an overv iew of the projects which are based on 1 sector code only:

Table 9 .
Project with common sector codes and percentage points

Table 10 .
Top reasons for a negative sustainability rat ing in Hait i 51

Table 11 .
Top reasons for a negative sustainability rat ing in Africa 54

Table 12 .
Top reasons for a negative sustainability rat ing in Asia 56

Table 13 .
Direct risk co mparison of Asia and Africa

Table 14 .
Project type comparison in Asia and Africa

Table 15 .
Negative sustainability counts of positive NPV projects

Table 16 .
Results of negative sustainability projects with a positive NPV

Project Type Category Mapping of the Neg ati ve Sustainability Projects of the LDCs
This table shows the reasons for "Unlikely" and "Highly Un likely" sustainability rat ings across all LDCs.This illustration shows the outcome o f the sector codes mapped to project type categories.For each o f the sector codes respectively project types the %-share based on the corresponding %-points is given.This table shows the result of any negative sustainability projects within the LDCs with co mmon sector codes.It needs to be noted that only where there is only 1 sector code available the % -points for this sector code are the same for the projects sharing this sector code (namely 1 %-point).