Banking on Development

Over the past decade we have witnessed a double convergence. Aid donors havedeveloped a growing interest in the private sector while private banks have set about creatingcorporate social responsibility programs, sustainable lending and microfinance programmes. Asa consequence, the dialogue between private banks and aid donors has been intensifying,opening new avenues for collaboration. The aim of this paper is to map the potential synergiesbetween private banks and aid donors. A survey of private bank lending towards developingcountries is undertaken in order to identify the private banks most active in those economies andprovide an analytical tool to help identify the scope for public and private partnerships. We findan international division of labour in bank lending: within the developing world, banks fromOECD countries tend to focus their credit on specific regions and countries. This mapping ofprivate bank lending also allows us to pinpoint concrete examples of best practices in privatebank and financial actors/aid donors collaborations. We follow by discussing some of the moreimportant cases in the field, and conclude with the potential implications for improvedpartnerships between private banks and donor organisations.