The World Bank Group’s institutional goals are to end extreme poverty and to promote shared prosperity. Economic growth and job growth are seen as necessary components on the way towards these goals. While the need for electricity for growth is intuitively clear, the exact details of the causal pathway are highly context-specific and have not yet been formalized in a universal manner.
The meta-evaluation sets out to understand and document how power sector investments contribute to economic and job growth. A literature review led to a formulation of the theory of change of power sector projects describing direct and indirect impact pathways. Hypotheses derived from the theory of change were tested using the evidence from power sector evaluations. Findings and recommendations to IFC on how private sector power investments can optimize job and growth impacts were formulated on this basis.