Executive summary

The World Bank’s adoption of missions, such as Mission 300 and Mission Water, signals an ambition to operate with greater coherence and direction. This shift requires moving beyond a model centred on fixing market failures and mobilising private capital towards one where markets are actively shaped and states act as strategic investors. Industrial strategy provides the operational means through which concrete, time-bound societal objectives can be achieved.

1. The World Bank’s mission opportunity

Development finance strategies have recently focused on mobilising private capital through instruments like guarantees and blended finance. However, this approach has not translated into stronger development outcomes, as progress towards the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has stalled. With more than one billion young people expected to enter the global workforce over the next decade, the Bank must shift from mobilising external capital to prioritising long-term investment.

2. A mission-oriented approach to development and industrial strategy

A mission-oriented approach rests on a different economic foundation to that which underpins much of contemporary development policy. It requires coordinated, cross-sectoral investment, patient public finance, and new symbiotic forms of public–private collaboration. This entails a shift in the understanding of public finance, moving away from “filling gaps” and towards directing investment and innovation around shared objectives.

2.1. Missions and industrial strategy

Missions translate broad societal challenges into actionable, concrete targets that guide investment across many sectors. For instance, following the work of Mariana Mazzucato, missions were adopted as a central organising principle within the EU’s Horizon Europe programme. In this framework, growth and jobs emerge as outcomes of the mission-oriented process rather than being pursued as targets in isolation.

2.2. Shaping markets

Missions require markets to be understood as outcomes of collective action, institutional design, and sustained public and private investment, rather than pre-existing mechanisms that policy merely corrects. Market shaping begins by identifying which economic structures need to be built and organising the institutions and instruments required to build them.

2.3. Building entrepreneurial states

The state must act as an investor of first resort in areas characterised by high uncertainty and long time horizons. Effective implementation requires “dynamic capabilities” within public institutions: the capacity to set strategic direction, coordinate across agencies, manage interdependent investments, and learn from implementation.

2.4. Directing finance

Dominant frameworks often view finance through a “finance gap” lens, but the report argues the constraint is the quality and direction of capital. When public institutions direct credit towards mission-critical sectors, investment can produce a greater multiplier effect. Public Development Banks (PDBs), which collectively hold over $23 trillion in assets, are ideally positioned to anchor mission-oriented portfolios at the country level.

2.5. Fiscal and policy space for mission-oriented development

Fiscal and policy space are institutional variables rather than immutable constraints. This was demonstrated by the allocation of $650 billion in Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) by the IMF during the pandemic, which expanded global liquidity. A mission-oriented approach depends on expanding these spaces to enable governments to use tools like procurement and public development banks to solve societal problems.

3. A mission-aligned World Bank

Translating missions into practice requires the World Bank to align its operational instruments across five dimensions: directionality, financing, public–private relationships, implementation capabilities, and country ownership. These instruments form an integrated system that influences the fiscal and policy space of borrowing countries.

3.1. Directionality: from projects to mission-oriented portfolios

The report recommends that the Bank restructure its Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) and Country Partnership Framework (CPF) around portfolio logic. Instead of aggregating sector targets, these tools should identify mission priorities and coordinate financing and implementation around those objectives.

3.2. Financing: from filling gaps to shaping investment

Debt sustainability assessments (DSF/DSA) must incorporate asset-side analysis to account for the productive assets and capabilities generated by investment. The report suggests replacing the “Cascade” logic—which prioritises commercial financing—with a framework where public investment leads and anchors portfolios around mission objectives.

3.3. Public–private relationships: from de-risking to reciprocity

Reciprocity should be embedded into the design of Bank instruments to ensure symbiotic relationships. For example, International Finance Corporation (IFC) equity investments should incorporate conditions tied to reinvestment, local capability development, and technology transfer, while MIGA guarantees should link coverage to performance benchmarks.

3.4. Implementation: from outsourcing to public sector capabilities

The Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) should be reformed to assess dynamic capabilities, such as strategic coordination and adaptive management, rather than focusing solely on market-enabling conditions and regulatory compliance.

3.5. Country ownership: integrating missions into national policies

Country ownership must go beyond consultation to ensure that countries shape the direction and design of mission strategies. SCDs and CPFs should support nationally led mission design and co-designed delivery pathways involving government, firms, workers, and civil society.

4. World Bank missions in practice

The report examines two key initiatives: Mission 300, which aims to connect 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa to electricity by 2030 with $30 billion in spending, and Mission Water, which targets advancing water security for 400 million people by 2030.

4.1. Mission 300: electrifying Africa

While Mission 300 recognises that energy access enables structural transformation, its architecture remains sectoral. Delivery is currently organised within the energy sector rather than through cross-sectoral investment portfolios that span agriculture, tourism, health, and infrastructure.

4.2. Assessing Mission 300: translating missions into energy compacts

An assessment of 30 National Energy Compacts found that while mission-oriented thinking appears in the framing, it is not yet systematically translated into institutional design. Markets are still treated as given, and finance is organised around mobilising external capital rather than anchoring public investment portfolios.

4.3. Mission Water: translating ambition into mission-oriented delivery

Water insecurity requires coordinated action across agriculture, ecosystems, and energy. Realising water security goals simultaneously requires coordinated investment across various sectors to govern the hydrological cycle as a global common good.

4.4. Designing a mission-oriented water compact

The report proposes “Just Water Partnerships” as an institutional model for Mission Water. These are equity-centred arrangements structured around shared missions and outcome-based conditionalities, where engagement is oriented towards system-wide results rather than narrowly defined returns.

5. Conclusion

The World Bank is at an inflection point. To succeed, it must move beyond sectoral programming and de-risking models to an institutional architecture aligned with market-shaping and mission-oriented development demands.