Progress towards women’s entrepreneurial development has increased over the past ten years. However, female entrepreneurs continue to face multiple obstacles in their journey – one of them being…

In the Africa Chief Economist’s Office, we seek to generate knowledge on key development issues around the continent. We also host the Gender Innovation Lab, which – as the name suggests –…

© Maria Fleischmann/World Bank Sustainability is the holy grail of development. There are many interventions that yield positive results in the short term but somehow fail to be sustained over…

Queen Alia International Airport, Jordan. © littlesam/Shutterstock [[tweetable]]In many developing countries, there are glaring gaps in the quantity of infrastructure per capita.[[/tweetable]] For…

Growing a business is not easy, and for women firm owners the challenges can be acute, especially when they are poor and run subsistence level firms. In developing countries, 22 percent of women…

Lucy Odiwa, an entrepreneur in Tanzania whose firm, promotes safer and more sustainable methods for handling menstrual health hygiene management (MHM) won the first place in the SDGs&Her…

Access to finance was the major constraint to starting or growing a household enterprise. Photo: Odette Maciel Non-farm household enterprises provide an important opportunity for employment in…

Malaysia’s experience in addressing access to finance for SMEs has been successful, serving as a learning point for countries like Tanzania. Photo: Samuel Goh/World Bank Tanzania is set towards…

3-1-0 Three minutes to complete the online loan application, one second for approval and with zero human touch for SME loans. This is the marketing slogan used by Ant Financial, one of China’s…

 Innovate4Climate Finance & Markets Week. Photo: World Bank / Simone D. McCourtie [[tweetable]]What does public debt have to do with combatting climate change?[[/tweetable]]   A few years ago…