The World Bank is implementing COVID-19 responses in nearly 100 developing countries, with USD 160 billion in resources leveraged to protect the poorest and most vulnerable households and help countries implement emergency health operations and strengthen economic resilience.

"In order to act efficiently and achieve impact at scale, we invite parallel and co-financing and the use of World Bank-facilitated joint procurement of medical equipment and supplies." 
(Read the full transcript of World Bank Group's President David Malpass' remarks to the Development Committee).

GRiF grants co-finance World Bank projects and are evaluated against a set of Guiding Principles and Appraisal Criteria to maximize the benefits to vulnerable people from earlier action and faster recovery.

Click here for a detailed note outlining GRiF's framework for the use of grant financing.

In addition to high poverty rates and severe fiscal constraints, Sierra Leone faces immense risk of natural disasters, pandemics, and other crises, which disproportionately affect the poor.
 
With USD 2.5 million in grant financing from GRiF, the Government of Sierra Leone is designing the country’s first shock-responsive safety net system, which will allow resources to reach affected communities once the safety net scales up in response to a crisis.  
 
Sierra Leone is a pioneer in the region in setting aside national funding for this kind of emergency response mechanism. The support from GRiF is also being used to make the beneficiary registry more flexible so it can better target affected households and pre-define disbursement channels to enable funds to reach households quickly. 
 
Alongside this, the Ministry of Finance is now engaged in a broader policy dialogue on financial planning, paving the way for a comprehensive national crisis and disaster risk financing strategy that will explore additional instruments, including a contingent line of finance and possibly risk transfer solutions in the future.

Risks from climate, disasters, and other crises often interact with one another, creating compound risks that are difficult to analyze - but critical to mitigate.
 
GRiF, along with Metabiota, is moving forward in a joint effort to build customized risk projections for a handful of high-risk countries and layering these with COVID-19 impact projections. This analysis will develop the basis for risk analytics that can assess impacts of compound shocks - such as a typhoon hitting in the midst of a pandemic.
 
Through macroeconomic modeling of compound risks, this work is being piloted in four countries, including the Philippines, Kenya, and Jamaica, to better understand how risk profiles can interact and ensure that the modeling of various scenarios is as accurate as possible to bolster the effectiveness of financial solutions.