Introduction
This strategy sets out priorities for Norway’s cooperation with the World Bank in the years to 2030. It outlines how Norway will work to strengthen the World Bank’s key role as a global driver of development in line with its mandate to eradicate poverty, reduce inequality and address global challenges, including climate change.
The world is facing significant humanitarian and development challenges caused by conflict, climate crisis and economic instability. Only a minority of the UN Sustainable Development Goals will be achieved by 2030. Every country is responsible for its own development, and aid alone has never been enough to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Insufficient climate and development finance has also contributed to a breakdown in trust between the global south and north. The reforms of the multilateral system must continue in order to maximise the effect of available funding and to create fairer, more inclusive, credible, accountable and legitimate multilateral institutions.
While need is increasing, several large, traditional donor countries have made significant cuts to their aid budgets. The decline in official development assistance is expected to continue. Many donor countries are increasingly linking aid to matters of self-interest, including migration and national security. The landscape of official development assistance has become more fragmented. The number of development assistance providers and programmes has grown, while more aid is being channelled away from government structures. This has added to the complexity of the global aid architecture, increased transaction costs for developing countries, and impacted aid effectiveness.1
Against this backdrop, the World Bank plays a vital role in the efforts to reach the Sustainable Development Goals and prevent aid fragmentation. The World Bank is the largest global channel for multilateral financing of development and climate programmes.2 Extensive reforms of the World Bank have taken place in recent years in order to unlock additional development and climate finance and increase efficiency and effectiveness at country level. By leveraging capital from international markets, the bank’s financing model results in a manyfold increase in development and climate finance available to recipient countries. The World Bank is a key actor within the multilateral system due to its considerable financial resources, its role as an adviser to governments, and as a knowledge provider. It is therefore in Norway’s interest to support the World Bank’s efforts to combat poverty and climate change.
The World Bank plays an important role in partner countries by building capacity and supporting governance reforms that help to strengthen financial and debt management, boost domestic resource mobilisation, and enable private investment. The outcome document from the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development held in Seville in 2025 encourages the World Bank and other multilateral development banks to continue their leading role in financing development and to further increase and optimize their annual lending capacity. The World Bank works in conjunction with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), regional development banks, the UN, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and other actors. Membership in the World Bank, as in the UN and the IMF, is all but universal.
Cooperation at the World Bank is subject to the same polarisation that we see across the multilateral system as a whole. For a number of decades, Norway has been urging the World Bank to strengthen its work on climate change and gender equality in particular. That has yielded results. However, these efforts are now being challenged. This strategy sets out how Norway will work to ensure that the World Bank maintains its clear commitment to development and climate action in the years ahead.
The strategy’s overarching goals for Norway’s cooperation with the World Bank are presented below. Chapter 2 addresses Norwegian contributions made through the World Bank. Chapter 3 outlines strategic priorities for the cooperation. Chapter 4 sets out how Norway can exert influence through partnerships and alliances. Chapter 5 discusses support for fragility and conflict-affected countries. Chapter 6 concerns cooperation on mobilising domestic resources, debt and private capital, and Chapter 7 looks at the World Bank as a knowledge provider.
The strategy applies to the period 2026–2030. The Section for Development Policy and Multilateral Banks in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has primary responsibility for implementing the strategy. An internal mid-term review will be conducted in 2028.
Primary objectives for Norway’s cooperation with the World Bank
- Promoting multilateral cooperation on joint solutions to global challenges by strengthening the World Bank’s key role as a development and climate actor.
- Securing support for Norway’s priorities in the areas of gender equality, climate change, nature, renewable energy and food security.
- Prioritising development assistance for low-income countries in order to combat poverty and inequality.
- Prioritising increased core support for IDA in conjunction with earmarked support provided through trust funds and financial intermediary funds.
- Promoting further reforms of the World Bank to ensure long-term financial sustainability and enhanced legitimacy, representation and effectiveness.
- Supporting the World Bank’s work in fragility and conflict-affected contexts.
- Continuing support for Ukraine through the World Bank with emphasis on reforms for EU membership, long-term reconstruction and support for the private sector.
- Strengthening the World Bank’s efforts to ensure domestic resource mobilisation, responsible and sustainable debt management, and mobilisation of private capital for development.
- Supporting the World Bank’s prioritisation of job creation with emphasis on inequality, decent work, gender equality and the green transition.
- Improved reporting, visibility and dissemination of results.
About the World Bank
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were established during the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, where 44 countries, including Norway, convened to form a new international economic system following World War II. Norway is a founding member and shareholder3 of the World Bank, which has a near-universal membership with 189 member countries.4 The Minister of International Development represents Norway on the bank’s Board of Governors, which convenes during the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) every autumn. Norway is represented on the World Bank Board of Executive Directors by an Executive Director who serves on behalf of all the Nordic and Baltic countries. In the period 2024–2028 the Nordic-Baltic constituency is represented on the board by Sweden. The board meets several times a week in Washington DC. One of the Baltic countries will represent the constituency in the period 2029–2030.
The World Bank Group 5 comprises:
- IBRD: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The original World Bank. Provides loans for middle-income countries and creditworthy low-income countries.
- IDA: International Development Association. Provides subsidised loans and grants to the 78 poorest countries.
- IFC: International Finance Corporation. The private sector arm of the World Bank. Provides loans and guarantees and invests equity capital in private sector enterprises in low and middle-income countries.
- MIGA: Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency. Provides guarantees to promote private capital mobilisation for developing countries.
- ICSID: International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes.6
Box 1 The World Bank financial model
IBRD: Funded by capital contributions from member countries that purchase shares in the bank according to set quotas, or subscriptions, based on each country’s relative strength in the world economy. Only a fraction of the bank’s share capital is actually paid in by member countries; the majority is callable guarantee capital, which countries promise to pay if the bank is unable to fulfil its debt obligations. IBRD has never called on these guarantees. IBRD last raised capital during the 2018–2023 period, when Norway contributed NOK 461.5 million of paid-in capital and approximately NOK 4 billion of guarantee capital. In 2025 Norway also contributed NOK 250 million of hybrid capital, an innovative financial instrument categorised as a capital contribution.
IBRD’s high credit rating (AAA) allows it to borrow money in the international debt market at low cost, enabling it to lend out far more in volume (the multiplier effect) than the members pay in. IBRD lends to middle-income countries and certain creditworthy low-income countries on more favourable terms than these countries would be able to obtain in the capital markets. The returns earned by IBRD cover the operating expenses of the World Bank (IBRD and IDA) while strengthening the bank’s financial reserves and enabling an annual transfer of funds to IDA (USD 783 million in fiscal year 2025). Since IBRD’s establishment in 1944, member countries have paid in approximately USD 23 billion in capital, which has made it possible for IBRD to lend more than USD 500 billion on favourable terms, according to World Bank figures. The World Bank estimates that each USD 1 in capital contributions over a 10-year period unlocks about USD 10 in lending to middle-income countries.
IFC: Funded in the same way as IBRD, by capital contributions that enable IFC to borrow in the market at rates reflective of its high credit rating. Norway contributed NOK 383.2 million in IFC’s most recent capital increase, in 2020–2025.
IDA: Provides highly subsidised loans and grants to the poorest countries. IDA’s activities are funded by donor countries, along with an annual transfer from IBRD’s surplus. IDA must therefore seek donor replenishment every three years. Each NOK 1 contributed to IDA generates about NOK 3.5 in lending and grant financing.7 This multiplier effect is achieved by supplementing donor-country contributions with continual recirculation of the funds repaid by borrowers as well as with proceeds from bond issues in international capital markets (based on IDA’s AAA credit rating) and transfers from IBRD. In the 2026–2028 period, Norway will contribute a total of more than NOK 5 billion to IDA.
MIGA: Funded by contributions from member countries upon its establishment in 1988. Since then, there has been no need for capital replenishment.