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Leveling the Playing Field: Addressing Structural Inequalities to Accelerate Poverty Reduction in Africa
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-02) Sinha, Nistha; Inchauste, Gabriela; Narayan, Ambar
Structural sources of Africa’s inequality are rooted in laws, institutions, and practices that create advantages for a few but disadvantages for many. They include differences in living standards that come from inherited or unalterable characteristics, such as where people are born and their parents’ education, ethnicity, religion, and gender. They also arise from market and institutional distortions that privilege some firms, farms, and workers to access markets, employment, and opportunities while limiting access for the majority and limiting earning opportunities. "Leveling the Playing Field: Addressing Structural Inequalities to Accelerate Poverty Reduction in Africa" argues that policies to address high levels of structural inequality in Africa are also at the heart of what is needed to accelerate progress in reducing extreme poverty. There is nothing inevitable about structural inequality. Economies that put up barriers to opportunities can also remove and replace them with policies that create a level playing field. Indeed, across the world, countries where opportunities are distributed more fairly grow faster and have lower poverty incidence. Broadening access to opportunities represents one of Africa’s key prospects for raising productivity and earnings and accelerating poverty reduction. Leveraging the most recent data available for the region, "Leveling the Playing Field" provides recommendations aimed at improving the productive capacity of the poor, the ability of poor individuals to use their capacities for well-paying job opportunities, and the design of fair fiscal policies.
Djibouti Country Climate and Development Report
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-11-19) World Bank Group
Climate change threatens Djibouti’s development goals and without effective adaptation, could generate economic losses equivalent to nearly four years of today’s output by mid[1]century. Climate change exposes Djibouti to more frequent extreme heat, drought, and floods. These events threaten the infrastructure and services that serve the vibrant trade sector and that could enable a more diversified economy. Other sectors prioritized for diversification, including fisheries, information and communications technology (ICT), and tourism, are also directly impacted by climate change. Unless Djibouti adapts, climate change will also have a particularly negative impact on the livelihoods of the poor, on workers’ productivity, and on water and food security. This Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) estimates that even a limited set of priority adaptation actions may require 1.1 billion in additional funds, including an additional 77 million per year through 2035. Such investment can be consistent with Djibouti’s goal of achieving both growth and debt sustainability, but it needs to be accompanied by economic reform and additional adaptation resources provided on a concessional basis. International support is particularly warranted given the regional importance of the resilience of Djibouti’s economy.
Niger Economic Update 2024
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-15) World Bank
This 2024 Economic Update for Niger is articulated in two chapters. The first chapter presents the economic and poverty trends observed in the country in 2023 and the outlook from 2024 to 2026. The second chapter focuses on access to primary and secondary education and provides recommendations to ensure adequate investment to enhance access to quality education. In September 2023, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) - a security and military pact with political and economic objectives. On January 28, 2024, in a joint communiqué, the three countries announced their immediate withdrawal from ECOWAS. According to the revised ECOWAS treaty, a notification period of one year is required to leave ECOWAS. The three countries remain members of WAEMU.
Gender Disparities and Poverty - A Background Paper for the Togo Poverty and Gender Assessment 2022
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-06-12) World Bank
Gender gaps in Togo cut across many dimensions. Inequality starts in childhood, when girls are disadvantaged in access to schooling because of prevalent social norms and gender roles. It continues into adolescence, when a larger share of girls starts dropping out of school (with fewer than one in two completing secondary education), unable to continue education because of a number of factors, including child marriage, adolescent pregnancy, and time use patterns shaped by gender norms. In adolescence and adulthood, women face the constraints of limited education and economic opportunities, restrictive gender roles that leave women little time for participation in the labor force, financial inequities, high levels of acceptance of violence against women, health risks, and a lack of agency and decision-making capacity. This background paper to the Poverty and Gender Assessment Togo (2022) highlights the importance of addressing gender disparities to achieve continued poverty reduction in Togo.
Mainstreaming Universal Accessibility in Senegal’s Built Environment: Practical Guide Senegal
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-05-08) World Bank
Persons with disabilities are particularly vulnerable, as they suffer disproportionately from social and economic stigmatization and various forms of exclusion. Intensifying inequalities affect persons with disabilities, their caregivers and their families. Similarly, natural disasters and extreme climatic phenomena, aggravated by climate change, instability, and conflict, disproportionately affect the lives and livelihoods of persons with disabilities and worsen their living conditions. This practical guide aims to improve the consideration of universal accessibility (UA) in the built environment. The guide was developed within the framework of the Saint-Louis Emergency Recovery and Resilience Project (SERRP), financed by the World Bank, with technical assistance provided under the mainstreaming universal accessibility in the World Bank’s urban operations initiative.
The Knowledge Compact for Action: Transforming Ideas Into Development Impact - For a World Free of Poverty on a Livable Planet
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-05-07) World Bank
Today’s global challenges are bigger, more complex, and more intertwined than ever before, from the relentless grip of poverty and stubborn persistence of inequality to the devastations caused by climate disasters, fragility, pandemics, and conflicts. Financing and investments alone cannot solve these problems in a global context of higher debt and scarce resources. Now more than ever, clients are demanding innovative ideas and successful experiences from other countries to tackle the ongoing and emerging global crises, regain the development progress of past decades and move faster towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. At the same time, recent breakthroughs in technology, including the rapid advances in artificial intelligence, offer enormous potential to revolutionize development work. Policymakers and practitioners across the globe are poised to benefit from new tools to innovate, act based on evidence and accelerate the transformation of new ideas into development outcomes that improve lives of the poor. This paper articulates the strategic direction of the Knowledge Compact for Action, which seeks to empower all WBG clients, public and private, by systematically making the latest development knowledge available to respond more effectively to increasingly complex development challenges. The Compact seizes the opportunity of the digital revolution, bringing together the wealth of data analytics, research and best practices accumulated by the WBG over decades and combining this knowledge with the WBG’s proven mix of public-private finance to power learning and innovative solutions. This includes capturing the tacit knowledge embedded in operations for policymakers and development practitioners to easily access lessons of development successes and failures in other countries. Ultimately, the Compact aims to take knowledge to a new level, placing it front and center of the WBG’s work to end extreme poverty and boost shared prosperity on a livable planet.
Convergence in the Sahel: How to Link Humanitarian Cash Assistance and National Social Protection Systems?
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-04-18) Saidi, Mira; Santamaria Ruiz, Claudia
Convergence is the merging or coming together of separate elements. In the realm of social protection, this translates into the effective coordination and alignment of different humanitarian and development initiatives toward a shared national vision. Convergence between humanitarian operations and national social protection systems has gained momentum in the last few years, as reflected in the humanitarian-development nexus. In the Sahel, a growing overlap between humanitarian activities and government interventions is emerging, particularly with the advent of adaptive social protection. Humanitarian assistance tends to operate in emergencies and volatile contexts with short-term horizons. In contrast, national social protection systems, including regular social safety nets, typically are longer term, more predictable, and focus on issues such as structural poverty rather than emergencies. However, both types of interventions share a broad goal to protect the poorest and most vulnerable and to promote their resilience to future shocks. Hence opportunities to better connect humanitarian assistance to the national social protection system do exist, particularly in the context of protracted crises.
Africa's Pulse, No. 29, April 2024: Tackling Inequality to Revitalize Growth and Reduce Poverty in Africa
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-04-08) World Bank
Economic growth is expected to rebound in Sub-Saharan Africa, supported by increased private consumption and declining inflation in 2024. However, this positive outlook remains fragile due to uncertain global economic conditions, low fiscal buffers, growing debt service obligation, costly external borrowing, and escalating conflict and violence, which continue to weigh on economic activity in the region. Despite the projected boost in growth, the pace of economic expansion in the region remains slow and insufficient to significantly affect poverty reduction. Structural inequality is at the core of these challenges and tackling it can help to restore growth and accelerate poverty reduction. While domestic resource mobilization and support from the international community can help alleviate the region's funding squeeze, investing in human capital, and strengthening local capacity for service delivery can build people's capacity to seize market opportunities. Policies that boost market access by addressing institutional distortions and market imperfections are also critical for fostering inclusive growth.
Togo: Economic Inclusion of Youth and Women into High Potential Value Chains
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-12-18) Kroll, Guillaume
Good quality jobs are key to accelerating poverty reduction and strengthening social cohesion in Togo. While Togo has made significant progress in creating more good quality jobs, with robust growth performance in the past decade, several jobs-related challenges remain. Togo’s labor market is characterized by high levels of informality and underemployment, low productivity, and low-quality jobs. This difficult situation is compounded by the demographic trend of large cohorts of young people entering the labor market every year. As a result of this trend, it is estimated that, beginning in 2024, Togo will need to create 200,000 new jobs every year to absorb the influx of new entrants into the labor market. As described in the companion document to this report, Togo Jobs Diagnostic, a holistic approach to creating more and better jobs should be applied looking at the macro-, demand-, and supply side constraints. Solutions should focus on creating new jobs, improving job quality and productivity, and ensuring access to employment for vulnerable segments of the population.
Central African Republic Poverty Assessment 2023: A Road Map Towards Poverty Reduction in the Central African Republic
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-12-06) World Bank
This report — the Central African Republic’s (CAR’s) first ever poverty assessment — draws on unparalleled microdata to propose practical strategies for lifting Central Africans out of poverty. Against the backdrop of a wide range of development challenges — including persistent low growth, conflict and displacement, andthe increasing threats posed by climate change –CAR urgently needs policies for reducing poverty. This report draws primarily on the 2021 Enquête Harmonisée sur le Conditions de Vie des Ménages (EHCVM), the first household survey suitable for poverty measurement conducted in CAR in more than a decade, to try and guidesuch policies. The report provides CAR’s headline poverty and inequality statistics, using the EHCVM’s unique sampling strategy to cover internally displaced persons (IDPs). The analysis goes beyond considerations of monetary poverty alone, assessing the extent of non-monetary deprivation in CAR, examining constraints onhuman capital development, and exploring the role that livelihoods — especially in agriculture — can play in lifting people out of poverty. Using geospatial data, the results are also linked to indicators of physical access to schools and health facilities as well as key elements of basic infrastructure. This Executive Summary highlights the poverty assessment’s key findings and outlines the policies that can kickstart CAR’s pathway towards poverty reduction.