Infrastructure

Investing in sustainable infrastructure helps connect people with opportunities, promotes economic growth, and improves livelihoods. It also provides a pathway for countries to integrate their climate and development goals by investing in projects that reduce carbon footprints, including renewable energy, green transport, and digital ecosystems.

Yet, across much of the developing world, infrastructure remains woefully inadequate. One billion people live more than two kilometers from an all-season road; 675 million lack access to electricity at home; and nearly 4 billion people live without access to the Internet. Disruptions due to unreliable infrastructure services impose costs of hundreds of billions of dollars a year on households and enterprises. What’s more, the poorest and most fragile countries pay the most for broadband, electricity and transportation services.

Closing this gap in infrastructure is essential to ensure everyone has opportunity and countries can compete globally and integrate with their neighbors. This is central to economic growth and poverty reduction. The World Bank supports its client countries to close their infrastructure gaps and make smart infrastructure investments that support green, resilient, and inclusive development, including:  

• Energy and Extractives: The World Bank aims to accelerate an equitable and just energy transition. We are one of the largest providers of financing for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in developing countries.

In the last five years, we have committed over $13 billion to enable renewable energy generation. Almost two-thirds of this support is for transmission and distribution infrastructure to facilitate the integration of renewable energy, guarantees, as well as upstream support for enabling policies, regulations, and institutions to scale up private investments for renewable energy.  

The World Bank invested about $5.5 billion to support energy efficiency, including direct investment in public infrastructure such as public buildings or street lighting.

• Sustainable Transport: The World Bank aims to expand sustainable transport options, especially in low-income or vulnerable communities, to bolster human development and improve social inclusion. We are working closely with client countries to work on the urgent need to decarbonize transport and to actively financing sustainable mobility transitions.  

With an active Transport portfolio totaling over $34 billion, we are the largest provider of development financing for transport. Our Transport operations cover all major modes (roads, urban mobility, rail, ports, airports and waterways), with a clear and growing focus on climate-smart transport solutions.

Additionally, through financial and technical assistance, we are helping countries around the world build more efficient and resilient logistics systems, including through the development of regional logistics corridors and the implementation of innovative technology solutions.

Since fiscal 2017, the Transport Global Practice has committed $14.86bn to low-carbon and climate-resilient solutions through 177 projects.

• Digital Development: The World Bank is working to maximize the benefits of digitalization while mitigating the risks. In more than 100 developing countries, we collaborate with governments to promote more efficient public services and build strong foundations for digital economies to thrive. This includes broadband connectivity, digital data infrastructure, safeguards, information, and communications technologies–enabled growth, digital skills and jobs, and the intersection of digitalization and climate mitigation.

• Sustainable Infrastructure Finance: The World Bank works to drive more investment into infrastructure to support high-quality, sustainable projects that maximize value for people, the economy, and the environment. In fiscal 2023, we provided $12.8 billion to support infrastructure spending in developing countries. Yet tremendous gaps remain. Developing countries need to spend about 4.5% of GDP annually to fund basic improvements in energy, transport, digital, and other sectors—far more than any one entity can contribute. The World Bank is doing the work to remove constraints blocking private sector investment:
  • We support policy reforms that enhance market transparency and efficiency;
  • We work with clients to establish the institutional frameworks and capacity needed at the country level to bring infrastructure projects to fruition, such as through PPPs. 
  • We develop innovative financing arrangements that combine concessional finance, grants, blended finance and risk mitigation instruments – such as guarantees – to help get projects off the ground.
  • We create bankable project pipelines that make it possible for private-sector financiers to get involved.

Last Updated: Sep 29, 2023

Investing in infrastructure helps connect people with opportunities, promotes economic growth, and improves livelihoods. It also provides a pathway for countries to integrate their climate and development goals by investing in projects that reduce carbon footprints, including renewable energy, green transport, and digital ecosystems.

But reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and achieving growth in basic infrastructure investment will require developing countries to spend about 4.5 percent of GDP—$1.5 trillion—annually. This is beyond what governments can fund on their own, especially given growing debt concerns and budgets strained by the pandemic.

The Bank Group is working to enable and mobilize the flow of private capital to meet this funding gap. In fiscal 2022, the Bank provided $14.7 billion to support infrastructure in developing countries, an increase of nearly 50 percent from fiscal 2021.

As a long-term partner, the World Bank Group helps developing countries build smart infrastructure that supports inclusive and sustainable growth. Our strategy focuses on:

• Deploying innovative diagnostic tools and approaches such as the Infrastructure Sector Assessment Program (InfraSAP), a strategic planning tool that helps governments identify opportunities for improving infrastructure performance among different sectors; and Country Private Sector Diagnostic (CPSD) reports, which enable the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to identify opportunities to help create or expand markets and private sector investment in developing countries.

• Expanding private co-financing by partnering with multilateral development banks, bilateral development agencies and private financial institutions to champion investments that unlock opportunities and impact poverty reduction.

• Scaling-up cooperation in digital development, smart transportation and clean energy by convening other World Bank Group institutions, international development agencies, private sector entities and NGOs to deliver solutions. 

• Building knowledge and capacity through academic partnerships such as the #Infra4Dev conferences. Launched in 2019, the #Infra4Dev series showcases recent research to explore how Infrastructure is critical for development.

The World Bank supports its client countries to close their infrastructure gaps and make smart infrastructure investments that support green, resilient, and inclusive development.

Ideas in Action

• In Poland, the World Bank is transforming former coal mines into clean productive growth opportunities, while retraining workers to support a just transition.
• In rural Morocco, when road improvements improved connectivity for remote villages, 20% more children went to school, including 7.4% more girls.
• In Côte d'Ivoire, the nation al Government requested support from the World Bank to formulate clear criteria for determining investment priorities. The new study is now being used as a basis for a new strategy for inclusive and resilient road connectivity. It is an example of how strategic technical assistance can be instrumental in creating investment opportunities.
• In Mauritania, a World-Bank supported project helped to increase the geographical reach of broadband networks and reduce the costs of communications services in the country. The deployment of approximately 1,700 kilometers (km) of fiber optic cable enabled Mauritania to establish the necessary backbone for quality mobile Internet services. In addition, the strategic studies delivered by the project helped to promote competition, public-private partnerships (PPPs) and open access.
• In Bolivia, a World Bank-supported renewable energy has connected some 20,200 people to the power grid in remote, underserved areas.
• In Bangladesh, the World Bank supports the largest off-grid program in the world through 2.41 million solar home systems, 1,300 solar irrigation pumps, 14 solar-based mini grids and 3 million efficient cookstoves. Around 4 million people in rural areas now have reliable access to clean energy through this program, which has created 30,000 jobs.
• In Pakistan, World Bank support for Tarbela hydropower provides clean energy to millions of people and has saved the country $2 billion.
• In Peru, an additional 100,000 jobs will be available to people living in the poorest districts of Lima thanks to the introduction of a new metro line.
• In Vietnam, we helped develop the Trung Son hydropower plant, which has supplied 1 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of low-cost electricity since 2017, improving the livelihoods of 3,400 households and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 1 million metric tons annually.
• In Rwanda, the World Bank helped the country reach near-universal electricity access by 2026, up from just 6% in 2009, by providing new or improved energy grid access to 230,000 households and off-grid energy access to another 150,000 households.
• In Brazil, the World Bank Group provided support to the National Government through a program aimed at structuring 15 PPP project that will benefit 4.5 million people, help reduce energy costs by at least 50%, and offer a wide range of direct and indirect socio-economic benefits.
• In Tanzania, we helped provide more than 4.5 million people with access to electricity and added new connections to more than 1,600 healthcare facilities and nearly 6,000 educational institutions since 2017, one of the fastest rates for energy access expansion in Sub-Saharan Africa over the past decade.
• In Yemen, the World Bank enabled over 91,000 households – 21 percent of which were headed by females – to acquire subsidized solar energy systems that support healthcare, education, and water services for 3.2 million people.

Discover more of the transformational power of infrastructure through these highlights from the World Bank's operational work in the area:

• Liberia Southeast Corridor Road Asset Management Project: The first road public-private partnership in an IDA/FCV country, the project aims to enhance road connectivity for residents living along the Ganta-to-Zwedru Road Corridor. 
• Kosovo Digital Economy: The project aims to deepen Kosovo’s connections to the global economy by improving access to better quality and high‐speed broadband services and online knowledge sources, services and labor markets.
• Digital CASA (Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan): In Central Asia and parts of South Asia, the Bank is providing analytic and advisory services to support the development of a regionally integrated digital infrastructure.
• Morocco Railway Restructuring Project: This programmatic ASA will provide technical assistance and analytical support to the National Railways Agency of Morocco (ONCF) in defining and operationalizing a new institutional model for the management of railways services and infrastructure.