Middle East and North Africa

The economic impact of the Syrian conflict: Estimate it yourself

Homs, Syria - ART Production | Shutterstock.com

Everyone agrees that conflicts impose huge costs on economies, including massive destruction of infrastructure and housing, disruption of trade, transport and production, not to mention the loss of lives and widespread human suffering. Yet quantitative estimates of these costs are hard to come by.

Education for education’s sake? The conundrum facing Palestinian youth

When it comes to education and human development, the Palestinian territories have traditionally outperformed countries with similar GNI per capita as well as its neighbors in the Middle East and North Africa region (figures 1 and 2). Despite facing one of the highest unemployment rates in the world and a severe lack of employment opportunities in the private sector, until 2010, Palestinian youth continued to invest in education.

Equipped with more education than any previous generation, young Palestinians are now moving into adulthood with uncertainty about what their futures might hold amidst a protracted risk of conflict and an economy with steadily rising unemployment.

Citizen Report Cards for Better Citizen Engagement and Accountability: Sanitation Sector in Egypt

Engaging with citizens to obtain their views on the quality of service and the responsiveness of governmental bodies is uncommon in Egypt.

The water and sanitation sector is no exception. Planning and implementation of sanitation projects in Egypt is typically dominated by technical design considerations — with little to no attention to ways in which the community might express its concerns. With an absence of accountability mechanisms to prod government agencies to make improvements, this conventional approach is associated with a weak sense of ownership by local communities and a poor record of delivery of quality infrastructure projects by the government.

But World Bank programs in Egypt are increasingly being designed to incorporate innovative social accountability tools that emphasize the right of citizens to expect quality public services and the responsibility of government to respond to the needs and expectations of citizens. A pioneering effort in this regard within the Bank’s Egypt portfolio is the Sustainable Rural Sanitation Services Program (SRSSP), which integrates a key social accountability tool in its design, namely the Citizen Report Card (CRC).

Solar Energy — putting power back into the hands of ordinary Gazans

"We have electricity for two hours every 24 hours," says a high-ranking energy official in Gaza.

Up to just 10 years ago, Gaza enjoyed full, round-the-clock electricity supply 24 hours a day. But by 2016, this was reduced to 12 hours per day due to severe power shortages — and the situation has declined rapidly since.

Collecting primary data in Afghanistan: Daunting but doable

Afghanistan is not exactly an easy place to undertake a rigorous study on the ease of doing business. And collecting primary data for a micro-based study in Kabul and several Afghan provinces can be a daunting task. Just how daunting is underscored by the fact that the country conducted its most recent census almost 40 years ago, in 1979. Vast tracts of the country remain unsafe and many of its provinces are inaccessible.

Despite the security challenges, our experience from the recently launched Subnational Doing Business in Afghanistan report shows that the barriers to collecting micro data are not insurmountable. The data and related findings can help guide business reforms toward the kind of smart regulations that are imperative for attracting private sector investment to the capital city and beyond. A regulatory environment that enables private enterprise, especially small and medium firms, to function and be creative boosts job creation and is, therefore, good for the economy.

The report, the first of its kind in Afghanistan, benchmarks Kabul and the provinces of Balkh, Herat, Kandahar and Nangarhar across four Doing Business indicators: Starting a Business, Dealing with Construction Permits, Getting Electricity and Registering Property.

The key takeways?

Kabul leads in two of the areas measured, Starting a Business and Getting Electricity. Kandahar ranks first in Dealing with Construction Permits and Registering Property, while Balkh comes in second in all four areas measured by the report.
Regulatory quality and efficiency vary considerably among the five locations. Rolling out reforms already implemented in Kabul across all of Afghanistan would improve the business environment for entrepreneurs in the provinces.
By adopting all the good practices, Afghanistan could move up 11 places in the global Doing Business ranking, to 172.

The jobs crisis in Palestine needs an innovative response

Landing a job after college can be difficult anywhere, but it is especially hard in conflict-affected economies, such as Palestine. Joblessness and job insecurity are an unfortunate reality for too many young Palestinians.

The Nigerian girl on my mind

Children from Gwoza, an area within Borno State, North East, Nigeria. Photo by: Nabil Shaiban/World Bank

Her tears remain vivid in my mind. She was one of so many young Nigerian kids that we met while on mission in North East Nigeria. They and the rest of their communities were desperate for hope and livelihood. I was part of a World Bank inter-disciplinary crisis response/stabilization and operational support team that recently visited the region, which remains the home base for the Boko Haram insurgency.

Connecting Palestinian cities for a more sustainable future

Cities expand in the blink of an eye, and with such rapid growth come corresponding issues. This is immediately apparent when you drive through a Palestinian city and observe the severe traffic problems. While such gridlock may be inconvenient for a person caught in it, it can be a severely damaging for many small business owners, whose shops become inaccessible due to the traffic build-up.

Four policy approaches to support job creation through Global Value Chains

Mexico created over 60,000 jobs between 1993 to 2000 upgrading the apparel value chain from assembly to direct distribution to customers. *(Photo: Maria Fleischmann / World Bank)*

As we discussed in our previous post, Global Value Chains can lead to the creation of more, inclusive and better jobs. GVCs can be a win-win for firms that create better jobs while they enjoy greater efficiency, productivity, and profits. However, there is a potential trade-off between increasing competitiveness and job creation, and the exact nature of positive labor market outcomes depends on several parameters. Given the cross-border (and, therefore, multiple jurisdictive) nature of GVCs, national policy choices to strengthen positive labor outcomes are limited. However, national governments can make policy decisions to facilitate GVC participation that is commensurate with positive labor market outcomes.

Tunisia: Improving local governments’ performance through annual performance reviews

The story of Krib, the top-performing local government in Tunisia

Tunisia’s transformation in the wake of the Arab Spring has been remarkable, and can be seen through a shift in the role and performance of its cities.

[Download report: Tunisia Urbanization Review - Reclaiming the Glory of Carthage]

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Prior to the Jasmine Revolution of 2011, the government of Tunisia was extremely centralized, and citizens had limited ways to hold it to account. The revolution created a force to change the concentration of power and the ability of Tunisians to hold the government to account. Specifically, the government created a decentralization program supported by the World Bank’s Urban Development and Local Governance Program for Results (UDLGP), along with support programs from other partners including the European Union, Swiss Cooperation.

One dramatic shift the program has introduced is the development and execution of an annual local government performance assessment. Every year, Tunisian cities’ local governments each get assessed by a semi-autonomous agency on a range of areas, which are critical for their ability to effectively govern as well as to deliver services and infrastructure. In the inaugural assessment (2016), the local government of Krib, a town in one of the most lagging interior governorates called Siliana, outperformed all others and achieved the highest assessment score.

To learn more about the program, watch a video with World Bank Senior Director Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez (@Ede_WBG). Check out Tunisia’s first-ever local government website to track the performance of Tunisia’s local governments over time (the results of the 2017 assessment which will be posted soon).

Middle East and North Africa

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