Community and Local Development

Experience has shown that when given clear and transparent rules, access to information, and appropriate technical and financial support, communities can effectively organize to identify community priorities and address local development challenges by working in partnership with local governments and other institutions to build small-scale infrastructure, deliver basic services and enhance livelihoods opportunities.  

The World Bank recognizes that CLD approaches and actions are important elements of an effective poverty-reduction and sustainable development strategy.  

In many countries, CLD operations are the only mechanism available to reach remote and vulnerable groups in a timely, credible, and responsive manner. In addition, they have a strong track record in moving funds quickly and flexibly in response to natural disasters such as typhoons or earthquakes, as well as to other crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. For instance, as a complement to household cash transfers, community-level (block) grants that are based on community emergency plans can be distributed to rural villages and urban neighborhoods to help communities quickly and effectively adapt to a shock, since community groups often know best what the specific needs are in each community.   

The Bank supports governments in designing, implementing, and evaluating CLD programs across a range of low to middle-income countries, including countries affected by fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV). The programs respond to a variety of urgent needs including access to clean water, rural roads, school and health clinic construction, nutrition programs for mothers and infants, and support for micro-enterprises.  These programs have consistently shown an ability to deliver an increase in access to quality infrastructure and services in a cost-effective manner, and in ways that enjoy broad community support and local legitimacy.

Last Updated: Aug 15, 2025

Over the past decades, many national governments have used CLD approaches as a way to combat poverty and reduce inequality. The approach of partnering with communities and local units of government, including putting resources under the direct control of community groups, has led to the efficient and inclusive delivery of basic services, and, when sustained over time, measurable reductions in poverty, particularly among the poorest populations and communities. 

As of June 2024, the World Bank supported 347 active CLD projects in 94 countries valued at US$ 52.7 billion. Of this approximately US$ 42.7 billion is Bank financing (70 percent of which is IDA or IDA/blend financing) with an additional US$10 billion provided by borrowers and other donors. CLD approaches remain particularly important in situations of FCV, where they can enable capacity-constrained governments to deliver at scale. As of end-June 2024, the global active CLD-FCV portfolio covered 27 of the 39 countries (69 percent) on the FY24 List of Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations, as well as 13 other countries which were either on earlier harmonized lists of fragile situations when projects began or are countries where projects are targeted at the displaced or conflict zones. 

CLD programs have evolved over time to adapt to many different local contexts and needs, delivering tangible results on the ground in some of the most geographically remote and operationally hard-to-reach areas on the globe. 

Moving forward, the World Bank is leveraging the opportunities that CLD approaches and platforms offer, including delivering increased engagement in FCV situations, and deepening understanding and new approaches in the following key frontier areas: 

• Operating in situations of fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV). CLD programs have proven particularly effective in FCV situations. A 2016 review by the Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) found CLD approaches to be among the most frequent operational approach in the World Bank Group’s FCV portfolio. This is linked, in part, to the ability of CLD programs to reach remote or insecure areas effectively and at scale, and their track record in delivering results quickly and in an inclusive manner. The importance of inclusive service provision to prevent conflict was highlighted in the recent U.N.-World Bank flagship study Pathways for Peace, and the World Bank has launched a global innovation and learning program to foster the contributions of CLD programs in conflict prevention. Countries that have drawn upon CLD approaches in the Africa region include,  Cote d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Mali, Mozambique and South Sudan.

• Supporting local economic development. Building on the successful experience of programs in South Asia as well as Latin America and the Caribbean, work is underway to expand the use of CLD approaches in supporting local economic development in other regions. This responds to high and growing demand, including in middle-income countries, and includes work to facilitate market-oriented investments and value chain opportunities, as well as increasing community-level access to finance, such as through digital technologies.

• Combatting the impacts of climate change on vulnerable populations. As the climate continues to change, millions of vulnerable people face greater challenges—including more frequent and extreme weather events, worsening health outcomes, threats to food and water security, unstable livelihoods, and rising displacement and migration. The World Bank supports CLD approaches and devolved climate finance that empower communities to drive a climate agenda in support of their development goals and promote greater transparency and accountability on climate finance for local stakeholders.

The World Bank is taking up these opportunities through targeted analytical work, technical assistance to flagship programs around the world, quality assurance support through information and knowledge exchange, and by supporting staff skills development.

Last Updated: Aug 15, 2025

In recent years, World Bank support for CLD has increasingly focused on creating national platforms to enhance service delivery and address poverty. Many programs that began as stand-alone operations have gradually expanded to much wider, often national, coverage that have become part of formal decentralization strategies and address multi-sectoral issues.

Indonesia: Launched in 2018 and building on the successful structures created under previous CLD programs, the Investing in Nutrition and Early Years project is a flagship initiative by the government of Indonesia to prevent childhood stunting and invest in human capital.  This cross-sectoral effort supports the implementation of the government’s National Strategy to Accelerate Stunting Prevention. Launched by the Indonesian Vice President in August 2017, the strategy commits 23 ministries, 514 regional governments, and 75,000 villages to converge priority interventions across a range of sectors—including health, water and sanitation, early childhood education, social protection, and agriculture and food security—for households with pregnant mothers and children under age two.

Guinea: The Guinea Support to Local Governance Project was launched in March 2019 to improve local government capacity in managing their public financial resources in a transparent and participatory manner, and in mitigating local conflicts. The project leverage mining revenue to finance local development opportunities and improve service delivery in lagging rural areas. Phase 2 of the project was approved in October 2023 and introduced tools and incentives to encourage communes to allocate resources towards optimizing climate resilience and adaptation. Since 2019, over $77 million USD in mining tax revenue has been transferred to all Guinean communes outside of Conakry, financing 1,500 sub-projects in health, education, water and sanitation, and other sectors, directly benefitting an estimated 4 million people. Project Spotlight: English | French

Philippines: The KC National Community Driven Development Project (KC-NCDDP), launched in February 2014, provided $779 million USD in funding to support the Philippine government's primary community empowerment and poverty alleviation programs. KC-NCDDP empowers poor communities and has delivered strong results in some of the Philippines’ most remote and underserved areas, including Indigenous communities. It has financed 54,843 sub-projects that benefit 17.4 million households. These initiatives—ranging from village roads and social services to environmental protection and community utilities—have improved the lives of approximately 1.5 million Indigenous households. Since 2014, nearly 2.5 million community volunteers have participated in the project, 63 percent of whom are women. The project significantly improved access to essential infrastructure and services, achieving an average 68 percent increase across all sub-project types. The Philippines Community Resilience Project, approved in July 2025, builds upon the successes of the KC-NCDDP, providing technical support to local government and community members in 500 vulnerable municipalities across 49 provinces, enabling at-risk populations to better plan for and respond to climate challenges.

Horn of Africa: The $630 million Development Response to Displacement Impacts Project (DRDIP) was launched in 2016 to improve access to basic social services—including health, education, and water—enhance environmental management, and expand access to economic opportunities for host communities and refugees in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda. The Horn of Africa plays host to over 20 million forcibly displaced people, including 5 million refugees and asylum-seekers, and many are located in areas that are suffering from serious development deficits.

Through a grant to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), DRDIP facilitated the design and rollout of inclusive refugee policies across the Horn of Africa. By addressing the strain refugee populations place on local services and the environment, DRDIP aimed to turn these challenges into opportunities for host communities. The project improved access to essential services—such as schools, health clinics, roads, and water systems—for 6.4 million people, restored over 66,000 hectares of degraded land, and helped more than 250,000 people increase their incomes through training and financing for farmers and small businesses. Labor-intensive public works generated over 8.4 million workdays of employment, and the project provided renewable energy to 230,000 people, helping communities strengthen their resilience and economic prospects.

Last Updated: Aug 15, 2025