The China-World Bank Group Partnership Facility

Insects for Human Food and Animal Feed in Africa

Overview

This grant was designed to leverage China's advanced expertise in insect farming and pilot insect production and processing technologies across Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Malawi. Insects offer a protein- and nutrient-rich source for human food and animal feed, providing a fast and resource-efficient pathway to high-quality protein production — positioning insect farming as a promising food security tool for countries facing acute shortages, particularly in FCV-affected settings.

Key Activities and Achievements

• Training and Capacity Building: Trainers and farmers across the three pilot countries were trained in insect production and processing for both food and feed, initially focusing on mealworms and black soldier fly larvae. This established a cadre of locally based practitioners capable of sustaining and expanding insect farming independently.
• Pilot Implementation: Pilots were established in Malawi, Kenya, and Zimbabwe, implemented directly by trained farmers. These pilots demonstrated the feasibility and practical benefits of insect farming, raised awareness among communities and institutions, and contributed to early adoption of insect-based food and feed systems at the local level.
• Livelihood and Spillover Benefits: The pilots generated meaningful spillover effects. Farmers utilized insect frass — a nutrient-rich byproduct — as a natural fertilizer, improving soil health, crop quality, and yields, including banana production. Access to high-quality insect-based feed also enabled beneficiaries to begin rearing chickens and fish, diversifying household incomes and strengthening livelihoods more broadly.
• Government and Institutional Engagement: Federal and local governments, along with partner institutions, have expressed strong interest in supporting further scale-up. Expanded local production of insect-based food, feed, and fertilizer holds the potential to reduce reliance on costly imports and ease pressure on scarce foreign currency reserves.

Findings were disseminated across Malawi, Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Sudan, and Senegal, and presented at international forums including UNGA, FAO, and UNHCR events.

Connectivity for Prosperity: Sharing China’s Transport Know-how Globally via TransFORM

Overview

This CWPF grant supported TransFORM 3.0, a strategic knowledge platform developed in partnership with China's Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Transport. Since its establishment in 2014, TransFORM has served as a central mechanism for capturing and disseminating China's transport development experience — originally within China, and increasingly to international audiences. Demand has been particularly strong from Asian countries seeking insights on port development and from African countries looking to adapt China's rural road and decarbonization models to their own contexts. The grant’s objectives included: producing a diagnostic on how connectivity improvements across China's provinces contributed to poverty reduction over 40 years; generating customized knowledge products across six transport sub-sectors; delivering tailored peer-to-peer learning and policy diagnostics; and building a dynamic online community for knowledge exchange.

Key Activities and Achievements

• Knowledge Exchange Events: A wide range of high-profile knowledge exchange events were organized, including a side event on decarbonizing transport at the Global Sustainable Transport Forum 2023, the Transportation Development Forum at CICTP 2023 and CICTP 2024, the Decarbonizing Maritime and Inland Waterways Transport Workshop in March 2024, the Annual National Urban Transport Planning Conference in Kunming in September 2024, and a panel on new port business models at the World Ports Conference in Hamburg in October 2024. A standout achievement was the Tianjin Urban Transport Improvement Project receiving the 2024 Sustainable Transport Award at the Transforming Transportation Conference in Washington, D.C. The grant leveraged this recognition to amplify Tianjin's model globally through follow-on seminars with the World Bank and development partners.
• Knowledge Products and Institutional Collaboration: The redeveloped TransFORM website attracted 107,377 visits in just two months following its launch in October 2024 — more than six times the 16,685 visits recorded on the previous site over the prior nine months — reflecting the platform's significantly enhanced reach and usability.
• The grant also produced a rich body of knowledge products, including publications on port development, rural roads and poverty reduction, public transport electrification in Shenzhen, and urban mobility transformation in Tianjin. Additional publications on e-mobility and decarbonization are forthcoming. Implementation drew on close collaboration with Chinese institutions: China Transport News led the website redevelopment; the China Academy of Transportation Sciences contributed data and modeling on connectivity and poverty; and the China Waterborne Transport Research Institute partnered on maritime decarbonization.
• Contribution to the Country Partnership Framework: Collectively, these outputs contribute directly to the FY21–FY25 Country Partnership Framework under the crosscutting priority of sharing China's knowledge globally for development, positioning TransFORM as a proven and scalable model for South-South knowledge exchange in the transport sector.

Harnessing Data for Just-in-Time Analytics and Action for Global Food Security

Overview

This grant, supported under the China-World Bank Group Partnership Facility (CWPF), aims to operationalize Earth Observation (EO) data and analytics for just-in-time food security assessment. Its core objective is to improve the efficiency and timeliness of national and global emergency responses, particularly for vulnerable populations in Africa and Fragile, Conflict-affected, and Vulnerable (FCV) contexts. The program directly responds to the cascading impacts of recent global crises that have pushed an estimated 345 million people into food insecurity across 82 countries as of 2022.

Key Activities and Achievements

• Global Knowledge Foundation: The project launched with the Earth Observation for Food Security international workshop at World Bank headquarters in May 2023, convening experts from government, academia, and international agencies. The event informed a comprehensive internal report of the same title, which catalogues available EO technologies, documents practical use cases, and sets out recommendations for embedding these tools within Bank-supported food security programs. This publication serves as the analytical backbone for the grant's downstream activities.
• Capacity Building in Priority Countries: A central pillar of implementation has been targeted capacity building in Ethiopia, Madagascar, and Mozambique, conducted in partnership with the Aerospace Information Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIRCAS). Through workshops in Beijing and tailored in-country sessions, government counterparts were trained on CropWatch Cloud, a web-based agricultural monitoring platform. Trained staff are now actively producing country-specific inputs for the quarterly CropWatch bulletin — a tangible outcome that directly supports evidence-based decision-making by national authorities and World Bank teams.
• GEOGLAM Collaboration: In parallel, the project engaged the Group on Earth Observations Global Agricultural Monitoring (GEOGLAM) to strengthen technical integration and expand South-South learning. GEOGLAM provided technical support to the Joint Monitoring Report team, improving the integration of geospatial data into predictive food insecurity models. It also facilitated participation of government representatives from Mozambique and Somalia in the East Africa Learning Exchange held in Naivasha, Kenya, in March 2024. Although a planned workshop in Maputo was cancelled due to post-election unrest, GEOGLAM completed a five-year strategic roadmap outlining priorities for advancing agricultural monitoring capacity across the region.
• Outreach and Dissemination: Lessons and tools developed under the grant have been disseminated through the World Bank's What's Cooking? webinar series, international EO conferences, and country-level workshops. These engagements have broadened awareness of just-in-time monitoring solutions and expanded the community of practitioners equipped to apply EO analytics in food security operations.

Building a Climate-Resilient Blue Economy in Morocco

Overview

This grant, supported Morocco lay the institutional foundations for a climate-resilient Blue Economy. It aimed to strengthen the Government of Morocco's capacity to develop policy frameworks, improve integrated natural resource management, and build priority sectors — while leveraging China's expertise in Blue Economy development to benefit Moroccan policymakers, scientists, and regional authorities.

Key Activities and Achievements

• Measurement Tools and the Blue Economy Index: Led by the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the grant developed an innovative, participatory methodology to quantify the Blue Economy's contribution to GDP and employment at both national and regional levels. This produced a Blue Economy Index that will be integrated into Morocco's Blue Economy Portal, providing policymakers, academia, civil society, and the private sector with a shared platform for monitoring, policy analysis, and performance reporting.
• Coastal Cluster Design: Analytical work in the pilot regions of Tanger–Tétouan–Al Hoceima and Souss–Massa produced the first comprehensive mapping of ocean-dependent sectors in those areas. The diagnostics assessed regulatory landscapes and governance structures to minimize conflicts among existing and emerging activities, and to optimize economic, social, and environmental outcomes. Findings are informing the work of Morocco's Inter-ministerial Commission for the Blue Economy and will guide the preparation of regional Blue Economy Development Plans.
• Innovative Financing Mechanisms: The grant identified and developed business plans for blue financing instruments — particularly for aquaculture, shrimp, and algae farming — to mobilize private investment for resilient blue growth. Activities included private sector engagement, financing gap assessments, and alignment with government priorities and climate strategies, laying the groundwork for integrating blue-finance tools into Morocco's aquaculture investment pipeline.
• China Blue Economy Study Tour: A highlight of the grant was the China Blue Economy Study Tour held in April 2024, which engaged 13 Moroccan officials and experts in visits to Beijing and Qingdao. Participants engaged with a wide range of Chinese institutions — including the Ministry of Natural Resources, the National Marine Data and Information Service, the Ocean University of China, and the Qingdao Blue Granary — gaining exposure to integrated marine governance, blue finance mechanisms, marine economic accounting, and advanced aquaculture technologies. While no formal agreements were signed, the tour generated strong mutual interest in structured cooperation and joint pilot projects, establishing a foundation for long-term institutional partnerships.
• The grant has delivered practical tools, replicable methodologies, and strengthened institutional ownership within the Government of Morocco. Its outputs — particularly the GDP measurement framework and coastal cluster diagnostics — are already embedded in ongoing World Bank operations, and positions Morocco as a regional reference for Blue Economy planning across the MENA region.

 Sustainable Finance and Banking Network 

The CWPF grants support the core costs associated with the Sustainable Finance and Banking Network (SFBN). Established in 2012, SFBN is a voluntary community of financial sector regulators, central banks, ministries of finance, ministries of environment, and industry associations from emerging markets committed to advancing sustainable finance for national development priorities, financial market deepening, and stability.  

The CWPF supports IFC as SBFN’s Secretariat and knowledge partner, assisting members in sharing knowledge and building capacity to design and implement their own national sustainable finance initiatives. As of March 2022, SBFN comprised 74 member institutions, representing 62 countries, with 86 percent ($43 trillion) of the total banking assets in emerging markets. 

SBFN members are committed to moving their financial sectors towards sustainability with twin goals:

1. Improved risk management and governance of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors by financial institutions, including management and disclosure of climate risks;

2. Increased capital flows to activities with positive environmental and social impact, including climate change mitigation and adaptation. 

Last Updated: Apr 24, 2026