How have institutions (primarily the World Bank) impacted development around the world?

As a general overview, institutions like the IMF and the World Bank oversees programs in
agriculture, health, education, and grants loans to marginalized stakeholders, to aid their
mission to reduce poverty. Though both institutions have been have been criticized for
ignoring others in poverty for the sake of their projects and for doing work to benefit Western
organizations and companies, it can be seen that they have had quite a lot of successes.

The World Bank is very involved in Albania, and one of the recent projects in the country
was to help them manage their financial risks that arose due to their use of hydropower.
Nearly all domestic power production comes from hydropower. As a result, electricity
production is highly dependent on variations in rainfall across seasons. This leads to Albania
having to buy electricity from other countries. The World Bank helped Albania to increase the
reliability of their domestic energy production base by complementing hydropower through a
diversified energy base and by strengthening their hydropower reservoir management.
Through this, Albania was able to maimize the use of their hydropower, and decrease the
money they spent on buying electricity from other countries, allowing them to use it on other
needs.

On the other hand, in Bolivia, a joint project by the IMF and the World Bank in 2005 led to a
backlash. Bolivia, in an economic crisis, went to the IMF and the World Bank for
recommendations to improve the state of the country. Among the suggestions was budget
cuts to social programs and higher taxes, and the privatization of utility and trasnportation
companies. However, privatized companies like the railroads went bankrupt, while the
energy industry less in royalties than it did when it was state-run. Standards of living
showed little to no signs of improvement, and the public was angered by the tax increases
and cuts to social programs, and blamed it for the terrible state they were in.

More recently, however, the World Bank has been increasing aid in countries that are
struggling to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. In Afghanistan, World Bank has granted a
$200 Million grant to support people in need, local businesses, and esnrues that basic
infrastructure such as water, electricity, and telecommunications stay to run. It also plans to
support projects that encourage students to return to school when educational institutions
are to reopen after the COVID-19 crisis. Though there aren’t direct results for the success of
this yet, similar projects in Albania and Bolivia in the past have proved to be successful.