Skip to main content Skip to footer

World Bank Group

Reports, briefs, and media around the activities of the World Bank. You can also learn more about the Our Land Our Business campaign by clicking here.

Publications

A Death Knell for the EBA, brief cover

A Death Knell for the EBA: Why the World Bank Must End its Ranking Programs Now

A new brief by the Oakland Institute urges member states to deliver the final blow to the Bank’s ranking programs — the Doing Business Report (DBR) and Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA). The DBR and EBA face a growing crisis of legitimacy and confidence. Since last year, two anchor donors have ceased funding the EBA; in January 2018, former World Bank Chief Economist Paul Romer resigned after exposing politically motivated...

Unjust Enrichment: How the IFC Profits from Land Grabbing in Africa

Unjust Enrichment: How the IFC Profits from Land Grabbing in Africa

Unjust Enrichment: How the IFC Profits from Land Grabbing in Africa , released by Inclusive Development International, Bank Information Center, Accountability Counsel, Urgewald and the Oakland Institute shows how the World Bank Group has indirectly financed some of Africa’s most notorious land grabs. The World Bank’s private-sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), is enabling and profiting from these projects by...

Down on the Seed Cover: Enabling the Business of Agriculture Enables Corporate Takeover

Down on the Seed: The World Bank Enables Corporate Takeover of Seeds

Only six multinationals currently control over two-thirds of the industrial seed sales, and pending agro-industry mergers stand to further consolidate this oligopoly . Further market expansion for these corporations depends on the shrinking of farmer-managed seed systems, which currently provide 80 to 90 percent of the seed supply in developing countries through on-farm seed saving and farmer-to-farmer seed exchange. Enabling the Business of...

Additional Languages:
Ruée sur les Semences
The Unholy Alliance Report Cover

The Unholy Alliance, Five Western Donors Shape a Pro-Corporate Agenda for African Agriculture

The Unholy Alliance, Five Western Donors Shape a Pro-Corporate Agenda for African Agriculture, exposes how a coalition of four donor countries and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is shaping a pro-business environment in the agricultural sector of developing countries, especially in Africa.

Moral Bankruptcy: World Bank Reinvents Tainted Aid Program for Ethiopia

Moral Bankruptcy: World Bank Reinvents Tainted Aid Program for Ethiopia

Moral Bankruptcy: World Bank Reinvents Tainted Aid Program for Ethiopia exposes the shameful reinvention of one of the Bank’s most problematic programs in Ethiopia. The report also reveals that the US Treasury violated congressional law when voting in favor of this program.

Pages

Blog

USAID project mapping and titling land in Petauke, Zambia in July 2018. Photo: Sandra Coburn

Land Unchained?

Wednesday, September 16, 2020 Andy Currier

Shifting land registries onto blockchain is a part of the broader move to "unlock the economic potential of land" in order to put more land and natural resources into exploitation by private interests.

Maungdaw, Myanmar - Farm laborers and livestock in a paddy field. Image: FAO / Hkun La

New Laws Threaten Family Farmers and Ethnic Communities in Myanmar

Tuesday, August 25, 2020 Katherine O'Neill

The VFV Law, the Farmland Act, and the LAAR Law are designed to encourage the legal takeover of lands that millions of farmers and Indigenous people rely on for their livelihoods. The three laws are a potent combination which ensure that the practice of land grabbing – widespread in Myanmar under its previous military dictatorship – can continue, now concealed by false promises of 'economic development.'

Sigiriya fortress in the northern Matale District. Photo: The Oakland Institute

Land Privatization: Why Sri Lanka Must Reject the MCC Compact

Monday, August 17, 2020 Janhavi Mittal

A recent report by the Oakland Institute examines the MCC compact with Sri Lanka and raises alarm over the irreversible consequences of embarking on land privatization – when most of the land is public in the country.

Kenyan tea farm. Photo: Samuel Phillips

World Bank's COVID-19 Assistance to Kenya Benefits Multinational Agribusiness and Agrochemical Firms

Thursday, July 2, 2020 Frederic Mousseau and Andy Currier

Despite the unprecedented nature of the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Bank continues to drive "private sector solutions to development" under the faulty assumption that catering to multinational companies will trickle down and benefit all.

Community volunteers from Chllla Khadar. Image: Vikram Singh/ Basti Suraksha Manch

Conditional Loans, Uncontrolled Misery: Doing Business in India in the Times of Corona

Monday, June 22, 2020 Janhavi Mittal

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought up the specter of the Indian partition as the country continues to witness the misery of large–scale human migration on foot and in deathly trains . However, the divide that emerges is not of two nation states but a widening gulf between India’s elite and millions of its second-class citizens — poor, toiling migrant workers. In the midst of this crisis, at a press conference on May 17, 2020,...

Pages

Press Releases and Public Statements

International Statement: World Bank Out of Land!

Campaign Victory: World Bank Suspends Funding for REGROW, a Conservation Project Responsible for Evictions & Human Rights Abuses in Tanzania

International Uproar Over World Bank’s Complicity in Abuses in Tanzania

URGENT ALERT: Tanzanian Government on a Rampage Against Indigenous People

World Bank Finances Evictions and Human Rights Abuses in Tanzania

Pages


Media

Experts in Tanzania Want Conservation ‘Decolonised’ As World Bank Pulls Out of Controversial Project

The Chanzo

Facing pressure from rights groups, World Bank suspends funding for Tanzania tourism project

AP News

World Bank suspends Tanzania tourism funding after claims of killings and evictions

The Guardian

Tanzania tourism: World Bank suspends funding for Ruaha National Park project

BBC

Tanzania: il governo accanito contro i maasai

Nigrizia

Pages


Documentation and Contracts

MIGA: Bolstering Private Equity Investment

Pages