Publication: The Upside of Digital for the Middle East and North Africa: How Digital Technology Adoption Can Accelerate Growth and Create Jobs
Loading...
Files in English
12,384 downloads
Published
2022-03-16
ISSN
Date
2022-03-02
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The argument that digitalization fosters economic activity has been strengthened by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Because digital technologies are general-purpose technologies that are usable across a wide variety of economic activities, the gains from achieving universal coverage of digital services are likely to be large and shared throughout each economy. However, the Middle East and North Africa region suffers from a “digital paradox”: the region’s population uses social media more than expected for its level of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita but uses the internet or other digital tools to make payments less than expected. The Upside of Digital for the Middle East and North Africa: How Digital Technology Adoption Can Accelerate Growth and Create Jobs presents evidence that the socioeconomic gains of digitalizing the economies of the region are huge: GDP per capita could rise by more than 40 percent; manufacturing revenue per unit of factors of production could increase by 37 percent; employment in manufacturing could rise by 7 percent; tourist arrivals could rise by 70 percent, creating jobs in the hospitality sector; long-term unemployment rates could fall to negligible levels; and female labor force participation could double to more than 40 percent. To reap these gains, universal access to digital services is crucial, as is their widespread use for economic purposes. The book explores how fast the region could approach universal coverage, whether targeting the rollout of digital infrastructure services makes a difference, and what is needed to increase the use of digital payment tools. The authors find that targeting underserved populations and areas can accelerate the achievement of universal access, while fostering competition and improving the functioning of financial and telecommunications sectors can encourage the adoption of digital technologies. In addition, building societal trust in the government and in related institutions such as banks and financial services is critical for fostering the increased use of digital payment tools.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Gévaudan, Clément; Cusolito, Ana Paula; Wood, Christina A.; Lederman, Daniel. 2022. The Upside of Digital for the Middle East and North Africa: How Digital Technology Adoption Can Accelerate Growth and Create Jobs. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37058 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Altered Destinies: The Long-Term Effects of Rising Prices and Food Insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2023-04-06)Growth is forecasted to slow down for the Middle East and North Africa region. The war in Ukraine in 2022 exacerbated inflationary pressures as the world recovered from the COVID 19 pandemic induced recession. The response by central banks to raise rates to curb inflation is slowing economic activity, while rising food prices are making it difficult for families to put meals on the table. Inflation, when it stems from food prices, hits the poor harder than the rich, thus compounding food insecurity in MENA that had been rising over decades. The immediate effects of food insecurity can be a devastating loss of life, but even temporary increases in food prices can cause long-term irreversible damages, especially to children. The rise in food prices due to the war in Ukraine may have altered the destinies of hundreds of thousands of children in the region, setting them on paths to limited prosperity. Food insecurity imposes challenges to a region where the state of child nutrition and health were inadequate before the shocks from the COVID-19 pandemic. The report discusses policy options and highlights the need for data to guide effective decision making.Publication Balancing Act: Jobs and Wages in the Middle East and North Africa When Crises Hit(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-10-05)Covid-19. The Russian invasion of Ukraine. Commodity price volatility. The rise of global inflation and interest rates. Currency depreciations among indebted middle-income economies. And now, natural disasters. As a sequence of events, the consequences can be both tragic and long-lasting. After analyzing the macroeconomic prospects of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region, this edition of the regional Economic Update assesses the human toll of macroeconomic shocks in terms of lost jobs and deteriorating livelihoods of the people of MENA. Growth is forecast to decelerate in 2023 after experiencing an oil-price induced growth spurt in 2022 among the high-income oil exporters of the region. Yet as the region continues to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 shock and navigates the heightened volatility in its terms of trade, the region’s labor force is contending with the ramifications for their livelihoods of the inflationary pressures associated with currency fluctuations in some countries. The authors estimate that the macroeconomic shocks of 2020-22 led to an additional 5.1 million individuals becoming unemployed in MENA. Will these shocks permanently scar the hard-working people of MENA? The report answers this question by highlighting the trade-offs facing labor markets when facing macroeconomic shocks. A critical trade-off pertains to the loss of jobs versus decreases in real incomes, neither of which is desirable. The report advocates for maintaining the flexibility of real wages and discusses policy options to support the most vulnerable.Publication Inclusion and Resilience : The Way Forward for Social Safety Nets in the Middle East and North Africa, OVERVIEW(Washington, DC, 2012-09)The report aims to meet two broad objectives: (a) enhance knowledge about the current state of existing social safety nets (SSNs) and assess their effectiveness in responding to new and emerging challenges to the poor and vulnerable in the region by bringing together new evidence, data, and country-specific analysis; and (b) open up and inform a debate on feasible policy options to make SSNs in the Middle East and North Africa more effective and innovative. First chapter, 'a framework for SSN reform,' describes and illustrates the reasons for the region's growing need for SSN reform and establishes the framework for renewed SSNs. It identifies key goals for SSNs (promoting social inclusion, livelihood, and resilience) and illustrates how these goals have been achieved in some parts of the region and elsewhere. Second chapter, 'key challenges that call for renewed SSNs,' analyzes the challenges facing the region's poor and vulnerable households, which SSNs could focus on as a priority. Two large groups are at higher-than-average poverty risk: children and those who live in rural or lagging areas. The chapter examines factors such as inequality of opportunities and lack of access to services that can perpetuate the lower human development outcomes among the poor in these groups. It also describes the challenge of vulnerability. Finally, it identifies particular social groups that are at a higher risk of exclusion from access to services and employment. Third chapter, 'the current state of SSNs in the Middle East and North Africa,' analyzes SSN spending and assesses different aspects of the SSN systems' performance. Fourth chapter, 'the political economy of SSN reforms in the Middle East and North Africa: what do citizens want?' presents new evidence on citizens' preferences concerning redistribution and SSN design, using newly collected data. It also discusses how political economy considerations could be taken into account in designing renewed SSNs in the region. Fifth chapter, 'the way forward: how to make safety nets in the Middle East and North Africa more effective and innovative,' proposes an agenda for reform and the path for moving forward, using global experience and the evidence presented in the preceding chapters.Publication Poor Places, Thriving People : How the Middle East and North Africa Can Rise Above Spatial Disparities(World Bank, 2011-01-10)The main messages of poor places, thriving people: how the Middle East and North Africa can rise above spatial disparities can be summarized in four words: people, connections, clusters, and institutions. This report shows how smart investments and policies in transport can connect poor places to the dynamic economies of their rich neighbors. There is also a wide open field of opportunity for telecommunications to bring electronic proximity to lagging areas. Many countries have spent huge sums on subsidies to entice investors to lagging areas-usually without any sustainable impact. This report recommends that governments turn their efforts toward the new approach to local economic development, which is gaining ground around the world, and is based on economic clusters, local competitive advantage, private initiative, and public-private dialogue. The report describes the state-of-play in territorial planning, public financial management, targeted programs, deconcentration, and decentralization, and it sketches some emerging lessons. This report combines the insights of specialists in the majority of the World Bank's key sectors: agriculture, development economics, education, health, poverty analysis, social protection, and transport. It is the report's modest aim, if not to offer a single formula for reducing spatial disparities, at least to propose a range of policy options that the region's leaders can reflect on in the light of their national objectives.Publication Growth in the Middle East and North Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-16)This issue of the MENA Economic Update presents a summary of recent macroeconomic trends, including an update of the conflict centered in Gaza and its regional spillovers, alongside an analysis of factors that shape the long-term growth potential of the region, with special attention to the persistent effects of conflicts. A modest uptick in growth is forecast for 2024, which nonetheless masks important disparities within the region. The acceleration is driven by the high-income oil exporters, while growth is expected to decelerate among developing MENA countries, both developing oil exporters and developing oil importers. Despite current challenges, the region can dramatically boost growth by better allocating talent in the labor market, leveraging its strategic location, and promoting innovation. Closing the gender employment gap, rethinking the footprint of the public sector, and facilitating technology transfers through trade under enhanced data quality and transparency can help the region leap toward the frontier. Peace is a pre-condition for catching up to the frontier, as conflict can undo decades of progress, delaying economic development by generations.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Falling Long-Term Growth Prospects(World Bank : Washington, DC, 2024-02-01)A structural growth slowdown is underway across the world: at current trends, the global potential growth rate is expected to fall to a three-decade low over the remainder of the 2020s. Nearly all the forces that have powered growth and prosperity since the early 1990s have weakened, not only because of a series of shocks to the global economy over the past three years. A persistent and broad-based decline in long-term growth prospects imperils the ability of emerging market and developing economies to combat poverty, tackle climate change, and meet other key development objectives. These challenges call for an ambitious policy response at the national and global levels. This book presents the first detailed analysis of the growth slowdown and a rich menu of policy options to deliver better growth outcomes.Publication World Development Report 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-01)Middle-income countries are in a race against time. Many of them have done well since the 1990s to escape low-income levels and eradicate extreme poverty, leading to the perception that the last three decades have been great for development. But the ambition of the more than 100 economies with incomes per capita between US$1,100 and US$14,000 is to reach high-income status within the next generation. When assessed against this goal, their record is discouraging. Since the 1970s, income per capita in the median middle-income country has stagnated at less than a tenth of the US level. With aging populations, growing protectionism, and escalating pressures to speed up the energy transition, today’s middle-income economies face ever more daunting odds. To become advanced economies despite the growing headwinds, they will have to make miracles. Drawing on the development experience and advances in economic analysis since the 1950s, World Development Report 2024 identifies pathways for developing economies to avoid the “middle-income trap.” It points to the need for not one but two transitions for those at the middle-income level: the first from investment to infusion and the second from infusion to innovation. Governments in lower-middle-income countries must drop the habit of repeating the same investment-driven strategies and work instead to infuse modern technologies and successful business processes from around the world into their economies. This requires reshaping large swaths of those economies into globally competitive suppliers of goods and services. Upper-middle-income countries that have mastered infusion can accelerate the shift to innovation—not just borrowing ideas from the global frontiers of technology but also beginning to push the frontiers outward. This requires restructuring enterprise, work, and energy use once again, with an even greater emphasis on economic freedom, social mobility, and political contestability. Neither transition is automatic. The handful of economies that made speedy transitions from middle- to high-income status have encouraged enterprise by disciplining powerful incumbents, developed talent by rewarding merit, and capitalized on crises to alter policies and institutions that no longer suit the purposes they were once designed to serve. Today’s middle-income countries will have to do the same.Publication A Gender Employment Gap Index (GEGI)(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-02-22)Despite a policy consensus that closing gender employment gaps will boost economic growth, relatively little is known about the size of these gains in many developing countries. This paper develops a new Gender Employment Gap Index (GEGI), which is equal to the size of long-run GDP per capita gains from closing gender employment gaps. The GEGI is simple and transparent and can be easily constructed using closed-form expressions for almost all countries using macroeconomic employment rate data by gender. The basic variant of the GEGI is the gap between male and female employment as a share of total employment. The full GEGI is similar, but instead of using an aggregate employment gap, the full GEGI is the weighted average of a “better employment gap” and “other employment gap.” The basic and full GEGIs are similar (correlation of 0.97), and both average 19 percent across countries. This means that GDP per capita in the long run would be almost 20 percent higher if female employment were exogenously increased to be the same as men’s (other things being equal). The paper also provides an application for the Pacific Islands, for which a simple measure like the GEGI is particularly important given the lack of alternative estimates.Publication Iraq Economic Monitor, Spring/Summer 2023 - Reemerging Pressures(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-07-31)Iraq’s economy continued its recovery after the sharp, pandemic-induced recession in 2020 but growth constraints in the oil sector have reemerged. After moderating in 2022, consumer price inflation ticked up in early 2023, fueled by the depreciation of the Iraqi dinar in the parallel market. Fiscal and external account balances benefitted from the oil windfall in 2022 but this trend significantly moderated in early 2023. The new budget is excessively expansionary, and lacks the structural reforms that Iraq needs to develop a vibrant and sustainable economy. The economic outlook remains subject to significant risks, largely due to deep structural challenges. Urgent implementation of financial sector reforms and modernization of its banking sector architecture, currently major barriers to economic diversification, are a critical condition to bolster the private sector and unlock much-needed job creation. Financial access in Iraq is amongst the lowest in the world, with only 19 percent of adults owning a bank account, highlighting a significant underutilized source of financing. Crucially, lack of financing remains the top constraints for small and medium enterprises and firms operating in the informal sector, undermining private sector-led growth and job creation. As this report’s Special Focus highlights, this is in part due to the banking sector structure and operations, which is dominated by undercapitalized state-owned banks with weak institutional capacities that primarily provide financing to public sector entities and state-owned enterprises. The private commercial banking sector is weak and has limited capacity to support financial intermediation and is geared towards maximizing revenues from the foreign exchange auctions. Furthermore, the non-banking financial sector is nascent with small and underdeveloped capital markets, unregulated Micro Finance Institutions, and an underdeveloped insurance sector. To tackle these challenges, the sector’s reform priorities include institutional reforms in state-owned banks and incentivizing digital financial services to increase financial intermediation and promote financial inclusion in Iraq. The full implementation of these reforms can help restore public confidence in the financial sector and help mobilize Iraq’s wealth towards solving the pressing development challenges of the country.Publication International Debt Report 2023(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-12-13)The International Debt Report (IDR) is a longstanding annual publication of the World Bank featuring external debt statistics and analysis for the 122 countries that report to the World Bank Debtor Reporting System. IDR 2023 is the 50th annual edition and includes (1) analyses of external debt stocks and flows as of end-2022 for these countries; (2) the macroeconomic and debt outlook for 2023 and beyond; (3) a focus on improved public debt transparency and the quality of debt reporting; (4) a discussion of the need for innovative approaches to debt management; (5) a commentary on how the International Debt Statistics database serves as an indispensable resource for researchers and policy makers; and (6) a one-page snapshot of relevant debt indicators and summary of debt stocks and flows for six years (2010 and 2018–22) for each country, plus global income group and regional aggregates. Unique in its coverage of the important trends and issues fundamental to the financing of low- and middle-income countries, IDR 2023 is an indispensable resource for governments, economists, investors, financial consultants, academics, bankers, and the entire development community. For more information on IDR 2023 and related products, please visit the World Bank’s Debt Statistics website at www.worldbank.org/debtstatistics .