The World Bank has been tracking the world's progress against poverty since the late eighties, but the release of 2008 data was the first time in which all regions of the developing world showed a decline in the number of people living below poverty lines!
For the last year or so, we have been collecting policy documents related to ICT use in education from around the world, with a specific interest in trying to document policy intent in developing countries, especially in East Asia. This is one component of a larger initiative at the World Bank called Systems Approach for Better Education Results, or SABER. As part of our SABER-ICT project, we are trying to help policymakers as they attempt to assess and compare their own policies against those of comparator countries around the world. Here's a very real scenario:
An education minister approaches the World Bank and asks for help in formulating an 'ICT in education' policy, in preparation for what is intended to be a large scale investment in educational technologies. She asks us:
What might be important to include in such a policy?
Cũng có ở Tiếng việt
Last month, we asked you for your views about whether Vietnam’s workforce is ready for the future, "from rice to robots". Developing a skilled workforce for an industrialized economy by 2020 is one of the stated top priorities of Vietnam, now that it has joined the ranks of middle-income countries. Not surprisingly, education reform was on the minds of members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party during a recent meeting. However, education is also hotly debated by Vietnam’s citizens as seen and heard in an online discussion on human resource development, organized by the World Bank and VietNamNet, a local online newspaper, and by readers of our blog.
Available in English
Tháng trước, chúng tôi đã hỏi ý kiến bạn đọc về việc liệu lực lượng lao động Việt Nam đã sẵn sàng cho tương lai hay chưa, chuyển “từ lúa gạo đến rô bốt” chưa. Việc phát triển một lực lượng lao động có tay nghề cao đáp ứng cho một nền kinh tế công nghiệp hóa vào năm 2020 đã được khẳng định là một trong những ưu tiên hàng đầu của Việt Nam, khi mà đất nước đã gia nhập nhóm các nước có thu nhập trung bình trên thế giới. Không có gì ngạc nhiên khi vấn đề cải cách giáo dục được đề cập đến nhiều trong các cuộc họp gần đây của Ban chấp hành Trung ương Đảng. Tuy nhiên, giáo dục cũng là vấn đề đang được bàn luận sôi nổi trong dân chúng và đã được đề cập đến trong một thảo luận luận trực tuyến về phát triển nguồn nhân lực do Ngân hàng Thế giới và báo VietNamNet tổ chức cũng như được các độc giả trên blog của chúng tôi thảo luận.
In the decade since the term 'open education resources' was formally identified and adopted by UNESCO, related "teaching, learning or research materials that are in the public domain or released with an intellectual property license that allows for free use, adaptation, and distribution" have been slowly but surely creeping into mainstream use in many education systems around the world. North America has recently seen prominent announcements about projects to provide free, online open textbooks in British Columbia and California, following similar sorts of headlines out of Poland earlier in the year. In June, the so-called 'Paris Declaration' [pdf] was released as part of a prominent international effort both to "increase government understanding of the significance of open education resources and to encourage more governments to support the principle that the products of publicly funded work should carry such licenses." In conversations with education ministries in many low and middle income countries over the past year, I have seen a marked increase in the interest in exploring the relevance of the 'OER movement' to national efforts to procure and develop digital learning resources. Traditional educational publishers have been monitoring such efforts closely, identifying both potential threats to existing business models, and in some cases, ingredients for potentially new business models as well.
How might we be able to track related initiatives around the world?
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| Children participate in an earthquake drill. |
Available in Bahasa
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| Anak berpartisipasi dalam latihan menghadapi gempa bumi. |
Juga tersedia di English
As the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) and its stakeholders from the private sector, government, the multilateral development banks, civil society and indigenous peoples’ groups gathered in Istanbul to participate in the first CIF Private Sector Forum, their attention is increasingly focused on synergies between the private and public in addressing climate change. There is a growing understanding among both governments and private sector players - from investors to small project developers to large utility companies - that gains are much larger if common strategies are developed and new partnerships are forged.
Michael Liebreich, CEO of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, opened the day with an energetic keynote address, provocative and positive, setting up the stage for the day by announcing the scope of challenge and opportunities for dynamic, and pragmatic climate investment strategies. Sessions on private sector adaptation, and business attitudes towards climate risk followed. The `Matching Expectations' panel brought together indispensable partners, the triangle of project developers-investors-policy makers, into discussion of regulations, fund raising challenges and investors' expectations and requirements.
The day also showcased five CIF projects, beginning with the highlight of the Morocco Ouarzazate CSP project, a unique PPP model, presented by Paddy Padmanathan, the CEO of the project's developer ACWA Power.
Consensus emerged that the private sector will deliver much of the innovation and finance required for investments in low carbon technologies and climate resilience in rich and poor communities alike. With scientists warning that we are not on a path to limit global warming to 2° or less, there is growing urgency to identify effective ways in which the public and private sectors can best work together to tackle and adapt to climate change. The CIF provide a platform for learning by doing to develop such models for effective collaboration and share experiences among the network of CIF recipient and contributor countries.
At a time of fundamental uncertainty on global financial markets, how should the World Bank help countries respond? Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of the global bond management giant PIMCO, took on this question during his recent talk at the World Bank, which was part of the PREM seminar series. One of his answers may come as a surprise: Invest in girls' education!
First, some background: El-Erian is one of the most influential figures in the world of finance. His firm manages $1.8 trillion in assets, an amount that comfortably exceeds Japan's foreign-exchange reserves, and he's on Foreign Policy magazine's list of Top 100 global thinkers. As a longtime former IMF official, El-Erian is also intimately familiar with international financial institutions.
Like a Bollywood dance sequence, South Asia’s growth numbers tend to dazzle. It is the second-fastest-growing region in the world after East Asia. But behind the glamour lies a paradox. Despite robust economic growth, the total number of people living in poverty in South Asia has not fallen fast enough. Today, there are more poor people living under $1.25 a day in South Asia than in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Social indicators are lagging as well. South Asia has the highest rates of malnutrition in the world, with 250 million children undernourished. More than 30 million children still do not go to school. Gender discrimination remains a scar. Women’s labor-force participation in the region is among the world’s lowest, boys outnumber girls in school enrollment, and legal and judicial systems still do not address systemic gender violence.
At a time when all decision-makers around the world can think about is the state of their country’s economy, debt, spending and fiscal stability, one phrase attempts to sum it all up: it’s arithmetic.
In Armenia, it is all about arithmetic too.
Despite the volatility of Armenia’s economy in the twenty years since the country gained independence, effective government reforms led to double-digit growth rates from 2001 to 2007. That ended with the global financial crisis in 2008.
This is the Arabic version of our blog: "If it's not Social, It's Bad Business".
نقدم لكم مقالة أخرى في سلسلة المقالات التي نقوم بنشرها عن الريادة المجتمعية والمؤسسات الاجتماعية التى تساهم فى تقديم حلول مبتكرة وشاملة لقضايا وتحديات تنموية هامة في مصر. لقد تحدثت زميلتنا جيل ريتشمند مع الدكتورة ليلى اسكندر رئيسة مجلس إدارة شركة CID للاستشارات ، والتي حازت على جائزة "رواد العمل الاجتماعي للعام" في عام 2006 ، التي تقدمها مؤسسة شواب من خلال المنتدى الاقتصادي العالمي. كما أنها أيضا عضو في مجلس الأجندة العالمية (GAC) للابتكار الاجتماعي ، وتتمتع بخبرة أكثر من 20 عاما فى مجال حماية البيئة وإدارة النفايات الصلبة وإعادة التدوير، بالإضافة إلى التعليم، وتمكين النوع الاجتماعى، وبناء قدرات المنظمات غير الحكومية، وتوليد الدخل في القطاع غير الرسمي، والدفاع عن حقوق الأطفال العاملين. في هذه المقابلة، تحدثنا الدكتورة ليلى عن مفهومها عن "التعلم والكسب" والعمل فى تنمية المجتمع بشكل عام بما فى ذلك دعم قطاع الحرف اليدوية والذى يعتبر من القطاعات الهامة التى سيدعمها برنامج سوق التنمية المزمع إطلاقه بمصر فى أوائل نوفمبر 2012.
Let's think together: Every week the World Bank team in Tanzania wants to stimulate your thinking by sharing data from recent official surveys in Tanzania and ask you a couple of questions. This post is also published in the Tanzanian newspaper The Citizen every Sunday.
Tanzania has experienced an exceptionally high population growth – from 11 million in 1963 to over 45 million in 2012. Among the factors that have contributed to this increase –one of the fastest in the world– is the falling mortality rate. Life expectancy in Tanzania has increased over the past two decades from 50 to 58 years.
In addition, Tanzanian women have continued to have many children (5.4 per woman in 2010), which is higher than Kenya and Rwanda (4.6) as well as other sub-Saharan countries with the exception of Uganda.
Since 1991, this rate has only declined by 13 percent in Tanzania against 26 and 31 percent in Rwanda and Kenya, respectively. Several other factors have also contributed to the high population growth rate that Tanzania is experiencing:
Guest post from Carron Basu Ray, (right) who coordinates Oxfam’s ‘My Rights, My Voice’ programme
The Ngorongoro area of Tanzania is regarded as the birthplace of humanity, a vast, strikingly beautiful part of the world. The Maasai pastoralists who live there are among the most marginalised people in the country and their children, especially the girls, have little access to quality education. I was in Tanzania a couple of weeks ago, meeting representatives from partner organisations and Oxfam colleagues who are implementing a dynamic education project that works with marginalised children and young people, their allies (parents, teachers, community leaders, etc) and many others on education issues and youth empowerment. The work is part of Oxfam’s eight country My Rights, My Voice global programme, funded by the Swedish Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).
I’m in Tokyo this week for the World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings and on Friday I will open the Bank’s global conference to look more closely at the serious energy challenge facing Africa.
Consider this stunning fact―only 1 in 3 Africans has access to electricity on the continent.
And that is why too little electricity is one of the biggest challenges I see standing in the way of Africa achieving steadily higher growth rates, better education for its children and teenagers, good quality health services that work, farms and agribusinesses that can grow enough cheap nutritious food for Africans to eat, just to name some of the transformational priorities which can happen when we turn the lights on across Africa.
I confess I am passionate about lighting up homes, schools, businesses, clinics, libraries, and parliaments across the continent. As a child growing up in Senegal, I knew first-hand about power shortages. More power for Africans will allow them to transform their living standards and turn the continent’s growth into tangible benefits for all.
Energy security is a key priority for my work as World Bank Vice President for Africa, and my team is moving ahead relentlessly to put power infrastructure in place to plug regional communities into cross-border power pools, more irrigated land to grow food and create jobs, galvanize more trade and commerce within the region, and to unlock all the other development potential that electrical power makes possible.
