One of the persisting critiques of the IFC is that it focuses too much on closing deals and too little on development impact, which is also the case of other development finance institutions. As a result, IFC's current strategies include a push for upstream activities, aiming to establish the conditions in a country that lead to private investments, which entails technical assistance.

Femi Akinrebiyo, a global manager for upstream work at IFC, underlines the need to have projects to invest in, which otherwise impedes IFC to accomplish its traditional role to use private sector financing for development.