ABSTRACT
Towards the end of the last century, the World Bank unveiled an ambitious plan to transform itself from an institution whose corporate ethos had been defi ned primarily in terms of long-term development fi nancing to one whose mission would now be about fostering ‘knowledge for development.’ In its annual World Development Report (World Bank, 1998), the Bank suggested that donors and national governments could narrow the ‘knowledge gap’ between rich and poor by helping low-income countries ‘acquire, absorb and communicate’ knowledge and information that might improve literacy, research capacity and the fl ow of information for markets and trade. The following year, and in collaboration with the United Nations and the governments of Japan, Germany and Switzerland, the World Bank announced the launch of a new ‘Global Development Network,’ based in New Delhi, whose primary goal was to ‘enhance the quality and availability of policy-oriented research, strengthen the institutions that undertake this work and offer networking opportunities in order to address better the causes and possible solutions to poverty and meet the challenges of development’ (Johnson and Stone, 2000: 3).
