Mobility is a precondition for economic growth: mobility for access to jobs, education, health, and other services. Mobility of goods is also critical to supply world markets in our globalized…

Marc Juhel |

Countries coming out of crises undergo rapid structural changes, including migration and big economic shifts. This can complicate the measurement of their progress, sometimes in unexpected ways,…

Mark R. Thomas, Kristen Himelein |

Conflict Diamonds A National Geographic Special on conflict diamonds. I am a mining specialist, not a conflict specialist. But on my recent trip to Sierra Leone, I was struck by the ever-present…

Christopher Sheldon |

Information and communication technologies (ICTs), including mobile phones, are increasingly seen as critical tools to improve public health and health outcomes in Africa. Several experiments,…

Samia Melhem |

With oil in Niger and Uganda, natural gas in Mozambique and Tanzania, iron ore in Guinea and Sierra Leone―African countries are increasingly finding rich new deposits of oil, gas, or minerals and…

Makhtar Diop |

Rusumo Falls Hydroelectric Power Project: Bringing More Electricity to Africa's Great Lakes Region In May this year, I joined World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim and U.N. Secretary…

Makhtar Diop |

If you saw how poor I was before, you would see that things are getting better.   When I hear stories like that of Jean Bosco Hakizimana, a Burundian farmer whose life was transformed by a cow, I…

Joachim von Amsberg |

In Sierra Leone's rainy season, the Sewa River, feared by many locals for its powerful currents, floods over its banks separating entire villages from basic services.  Konta health clinic in…

Margaux Hall |