Fatuma was married at age 15 and had her first child, Hadija, after a year, causing her to drop out of school and start working as a farm laborer. The Fee Free Basic Education Policy was a…

Nathan Belete |

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 |

How are sectoral employment shifts helping to reduce poverty in Tanzania? New research from the World Bank responds to this question by analyzing data from the National Panel Survey (NPS), a…

Akuffo Amankwah, Richmond Atta-Ankomah, Rob Swinkels |

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 |

Amina is a mother of two from Zanzibar and lives with a disability. She faced relentless violence in her marriage, but her parents advised her to stay with her abusive husband. He provided for…

Nathan Belete, M. Yaa Oppong |

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 |