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 |

Sub-Saharan Africa has experienced low economic growth per capita, a very slow decline in poverty incidence, and the number of people living in extreme poverty has been rising steadily. As a…

Johannes Hoogeveen, Johan A. Mistiaen, Haoyu Wu |

At Morapeli High School in Lesotho, the atmosphere was buoyant as young adults in smart uniforms welcomed me and my team with song and dance. I explained that our visit, and a major part of our…

Victoria Kwakwa |

Liphula (a pseudonym to protect the privacy of the student) is a 21-year-old young man enrolled in Grade 11 at Mohlapiso High School in Qacha’s Nek district of the Kingdom of Lesotho. He attends…

Tihtina Zenebe Gebre, Elizabeth Ninan Dulvy |

School leadership plays a major role in shaping the quality of education, acting as a strategic lever to foster conducive learning conditions for students. Despite this, the characteristics of…

Nathalie Guilbert, Carolina Alban Conto, Fabricia Devignes, Juan D. Barón |

The West African Economic and Monetary Union community, which comprises Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo, is facing a deficit of decent housing of…

Mazen Bouri |

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 |

In this blog, we present the main results of our Survey of Young Basotho’s Aspirations and Challenges, in which we hear from the youth themselves about their preferences, outcomes, perceived…

Lyliana Gayoso de Ervin, Samantha De Martino, Sara Troiano, Federica Ricaldi, Victoria Monchuk |

Digital technologies (DTs) have proven to be critical to the development of modern economies. They have changed the ways people communicate, reduced information frictions in markets, improved…

Andrew Dabalen, Justice Tei Mensah |

In 2021, the World Bank in Ghana conducted a portfolio risk assessment on child labor and learned that the high national prevalence of child labor, poses a challenge to operations. The World Bank…

Nneka Okereke, Anna Nordenmark Severinsson, Abdulai Darimani, Esther Bea |