The African Legal Support Facility (ALSF) has developed country profiles to assess the progress of developing PPP legal frameworks and carried out a comparative analysis of existing legal and…

Maude Vallée, Andrea Stucchi |

With the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), world leaders made a bold pledge in 2015 to leave no one behind on the path of development by 2030. Half-way to the target date, some 22 countries…

Samuel Kofi Tetteh Baah, Christoph Lakner, Umar Serajuddin |

Almost half of Nigerians are estimated to live below the national poverty line. However, unemployment is less than 5 percent, and even when many Nigerians are working, they remain poor. Why is…

Jonathan Lain, Utz Pape |

In Nigeria alone, over 85 million people —more than 4 out of 10 Nigerians— are deprived of electricity. My trip to Abuja earlier this month reinforced what I already knew: the paradox of energy…

Anna Bjerde |

Despite a steady increase in Albania's agricultural output over the past several decades, the country continues to trail behind its neighbors. The seemingly obvious obstacles preventing…

Fernando Blanco, Laureta Qorlazja |

Despite waning growth, many Nigerians are working—but working alone is not proving enough to lift them out of poverty because more and better jobs are needed. How are those jobs created, then?

Jonathan Lain, Utz Pape |

Our new paper “Free compulsory education can mitigate COVID-19 disruptions’ adverse effects on child schooling” focuses on the role of pre-existing policies, such as free compulsory education laws…

Marco Tiberti, Luca Tiberti, Sylvain Dessy, Horace Gninafon |

Access to finance is a major, long-standing obstacle faced by micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Nigeria. In 2014, only 6.7% of enterprises reported having a loan or active line of…

Sophie Dong, Andrej Popovic, Michael Wong, Michael Fuchs |

The World Bank supports cybersecurity skills development initiatives in developing countries to help close the cybersecurity skills gap and enhance cyber resilience as a catalyst for socio-…

Ghislain de Salins, Anat Lewin |

Africa is not on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal of eradicating extreme poverty. While many countries were successful in reducing poverty during the years before the pandemic,…

Camilla Holmemo, Christian Bodewig, Robert S. Chase, Suleiman Namara |