Whenever the share of industry in the economy starts waning, industrial expansion often becomes a component of the growth policies. This blog analyzes if and how targeting labor market barriers…

Rishabh Sinha |

Why are fertilizer prices so high, and what can countries in Central America do about this?

Luis Flores, Viviana Perego, Diego Arias |

This blog is a biweekly feature highlighting recent working papers from around the World Bank Group. It introduces five papers published in August 2022 on various topics, including COVID-19…

Marcelo Buitron, Policy Research Working Paper team |

Nigeria’s ambitious poverty-reduction targets hinge on developing human capital. Many of the drivers of poverty are considered in detail in a new report, “A Better Future for All Nigerians:…

Jonathan Lain, Tara Vishwanath |

Building capacity to collect taxes efficiently and equitably is an important policy goal for governments. Still, Liberia, like many low- and lower-middle-income countries, faces serious challenges…

Oyebola Okunogbe, Yahe Li |

Nigeria aspires to lift all of its people out of poverty by 2030. This is an ambitious target, as even before COVID-19 struck, some 4 in 10 Nigerians lived below the poverty line—about 80 million…

Jonathan Lain, Marta Schoch, Tara Vishwanath |

In Nigeria’s Kaduna State, the government has quietly improved service delivery and increased the effectiveness of public spending by enlisting citizens as its “Eyes and Ears” on the ground.

Muhammad Sani Abdullahi, Amaka Okechukwu Opara, Rajul Awasthi, Stephen Davenport |

Mobile government (mGov) offers developing countries several benefits for their citizens including financial inclusion, wider access to services and improved government social accountability.

Khuram Farooq, Peter Kustor |

Nigeria is currently focused on ways to mitigate the health and economic costs of the COVID-19 pandemic and the simultaneous collapse of international oil prices.

Bayo Awosemusi, Sunday Esene Osoba |