How the World Bank has implemented Country-Ownership

At the end of the 20th century development aid has entered a new era. After it was realized that donor-driven aid and the use of conditionality has been ineffective and has caused development failure, the concept country-ownership was introduced by donors. Nevertheless, even after the World Bank acknowledged the importance of country-ownership and has changed the lending system by the introduction of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Credits, still the World Bank’s approach towards ownership was found to be problematic. As a reaction to the criticism the Bank conducted an important evaluation on conditionality in 2005: ‘The Review of World Bank Conditionality’, which found that the approach to conditionality could be improved. In this research it is analyzed whether the World Bank has changed its country-ownership approach, since the 2005 Review. Poverty Reduction Support Credits are analyzed and the conditions attached to these loans will be compared to see how much ownership the World Bank is granting the borrowers. In the end, it was found that World Bank conditionality has not substantially changed in the investigated PRSCs of Ghana, Mozambique and Vietnam.