ABSTRACT
Christmas 1998. Jackson Hole, Wyoming. A multi-millionaire ex-investment
banker sits by the fireplace in his ranch, tucked away from the hustle of Washington DC and the misery of the developing world’s poor. He writes
on yellow legal pad in an indecipherable longhand about the need for a
radical re-thinking about the processes and contents of international devel-
opment assistance. Drafted as a memo to the Board of Governors of the
World Bank and its management and staff in January 1999, the Compre-
hensive Development Framework (CDF) became an ambitious and elabo-
rate endeavour by World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn to ‘change
the way the Bank works’. It had important repercussions for the wider development field.
