The question of what countries trade, and why is a complex and pressing one. This blog characterizes the specific activities involved in exports, providing an understanding that goes beyond…

Hagen Kruse, Marcel Timmer, Xianjia Ye, Gaaitzen de Vries, Deborah Winkler |

Some of the Horn’s countries are among Africa’s poorest. The problems are daunting, but the region’s governments are taking bold steps to tackle them. They have launched the Horn of Africa…

Fatima Anjum Quraishi |

If you paid some of the highest electricity tariffs in the world, you would expect some of the most reliable electricity services. Unfortunately, this logic does not hold in West Africa, where…

Mustafa Zakir Hussain |

The borderlands in the Horn of Africa are synonymous with economic, social, and political marginalization, entrenched poverty, persistent con¬flict, forced displacement, and envi¬ronmental…

Varalakshmi Vemuru, Aditya Sarkar |

On World Refugee Day, we pay tribute to faces of resilience – mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, and children, who fled horrific circumstances as refugees, but who continue to strive every day to…

Jim Yong Kim |

Sub-Saharan Arica has launched a new wave of “special economic zones” (SEZs), with more and more countries establishing or planning to establish SEZs or industrial parks. However, can Africa…

Cecile Fruman, Douglas Zhihua Zeng |

Sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA) impressive growth over the past decade or so has been matched by its equally impressive showing on the World Bank Group's "Doing Business" index. In 2012…

Aref Adamali, David Bridgman |

In Ethiopia, registering a trade name-- a precondition for a business startup-- had long been one of the most cumbersome procedures of starting a new business. One had to make frequent visits to…

Mamo Mihretu, Miles McKenna |

We drove 140 miles across the Djibouti desert to the Ethiopian border to gain a better understanding of the flow of transported goods between the two countries. Djibouti depends on its deep sea…

Vincent Vesin |