As the world rushes to reduce the negative impacts of climate change, ambitious sub-national actors are rising to the fore. The recent One Planet Summit exemplifies this trend. Earlier this month…

Having spent much of my working life working with and in countries in transition, it remains painful to watch the disillusionment that so often strikes people that had the courage to change a bad…

As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, the number of megacities is growing rapidly. Today there are 37 cities worldwide with populations of greater than 10 million, and 84 with populations…

Allô École! training for parents, primary school, Tshikapa, DRC. (Photo: Ornella Nsoki / Moonshot Global,  Sandra Gubler / Voto Mobile Inc.,  Samy Ntumba / La Couronne) Mobile solutions for better…

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…

According to the World Economic Forum’s “Global Competitiveness Report 2016-2017, ” Hong Kong dropped two notches to rank as No. 9 in its Global Competitiveness Index. The decline occurred mainly…

For the first time in history, the number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen below 10%. The world has never been as ambitious about development as it is today. After adopting the…

There is no sign that the revival of interest in adaptive and entrepreneurial approaches to development work is going tail off soon. That’s why the demand is growing for indications of how the…

Students using new high-speed Internet in Tonga. Photo: World Bank Group For private financiers, official government support to information and communications technology (ICT) projects might seem…

Over the past decade, illegal poaching of wildlife has quickly caught up to habitat destruction as a leading cause of wildlife loss in many countries.   Poaching African elephants for ivory…