Julia Ross's blog

The World Bank- IMF Annual Meetings wrapped Sunday, following the release of a Development Committee communiqué that endorsed the Bank’s emphasis on jobs and growth, gender equality, and recent reforms that have made the Bank more open and transparent.

Countries like South Korea and Thailand have seen similar demographic formulas work to their advantage in recent decades:  falling fertility rates lead to burgeoning adult working populations lead to greater economic productivity.

How did they harness these changes to create engines of growth? According to speakers at a World Bank panel on “Realizing the Demographic Dividend,” greater investments in health, family planning, and gender equality paved the way, followed by further investments in education, youth development, and job creation.

Several World Bank bloggers are writing on Africa this week, expanding on themes discussed at the Bank-IMF Annual Meetings.  A few posts to note:

>World Bank Africa Region Vice President Obiageli Ezekwesili says the Bank’s 2012 World Development Report on gender “constitutes an urgent call to action, especially for African policymakers and those of us who work on the world’s last development frontier.”

The 2011 World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings get under way next week with a full slate of discussions, webcasts and seminars planned around two issues critical to sustaining economic growth – gender and jobs.

In a world where women make up the majority of unpaid workers, and only 15% of landowners and one in five lawmakers are women, there’s a lot to talk about.

The World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings concluded Sunday, having brought renewed attention to the impact of the food crisis, challenges facing conflict-affected states, and progress toward the Millennium Development Goals, among other issues.

In case you missed one of the many announcements or discussions held over the last two weeks, here are a few highlights:

Food prices are the biggest threat today to the world’s poor, World Bank President Bob Zoellick told reporters at an April 16 press conference following the meeting of the Development Committee of the World Bank and IMF. “We are one shock away from a full-fledged crisis,” said Zoellick.

In their final communiqué, Committee members expressed concern that "overheating in some sectors, especially food and energy, is resulting in price pressures and volatility."

On our Arab Voices and Views blog, Steen Jorgensen writes about high unemployment in the Middle East and North Africa, where governments are wondering how to provide immediate relief while keeping their economies growing.

"The answer for those with lower skills probably lies in providing government-funded contracts to small entrepreneurs for labor-intensive upgrading and rehabilitation of basic infrastructure such as roads and irrigation canals," he writes.

Dani Rodrik, professor of international political economy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, visited the World Bank yesterday to deliver a lecture on "Structural Change and Economic Growth."

The Bank's Merrell Tuck-Primdahl has a nice summary of the speech and a video chat with Rodrik over on the Let's Talk Development blog.

In advance of the April 15 Open Forum on the food crisis, we've posted an online "hunger clock" to show how many people are becoming undernourished worldwide. For more, check out our post on Inside the Web.