Africa: IFC, Industrial Policy and the Private Sector: Development Through the Lens of the Thiam Threshold

From Project Bankability to Building Productive and Financeable Economies

As the World Bank Group places job creation, private sector mobilization and productive transformation back at the center of its agenda, evaluations by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) of the International Finance Corporation’s (IFC) engagement in fragile economies invite us to ask a fundamental question: Is making projects bankable enough to transform an economy?

The Thiam Threshold – Strategic Relevance Threshold proposes shifting the debate to another dimension: that of systemic coherence among investments, businesses, value chains, infrastructure, territories, skills, markets and finance.