Publication:
Blue Economy for Resilient Africa Program Overview

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (5.2 MB)
218 downloads
English Text (100.81 KB)
23 downloads
Published
2025-03-25
ISSN
Date
2025-03-25
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The Blue Economy is at the core of economic development and competitiveness for African coastal countries. Job-creating economic sectors like tourism and food-production sectors like fisheries depend on a clean and healthy coastal environment. Future development opportunities in sustainable blue energy and ocean mining are key to countries’ competitiveness. Ecosystem services from mangroves and coastal habitats, upon which coastal populations depend, can be supported by new revenue-generating instruments, like blue carbon. However, unsustainable infrastructure development, pollution, and the inadequate management of natural habitats and resources threaten the productivity of coastal marine ecosystems on the African continent. Climate change-related events such as sea level rise, land subsidence, storm surge, and coastal flooding are exacerbating the region’s vulnerability. The challenge today is: How can coastal countries manage their coastal landscapes to spur economic growth and reduce poverty while adapting to the effects of climate change? The World Bank produces Country Climate and Development Reports, a new series of core diagnostic reports that integrates climate change and development considerations. These reports help countries prioritize impactful actions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and boost adaptation while delivering on broader development goals. In this series of briefs, the World Bank reflects on successful Blue Economy operations that support African countries as they pursue green, resilient, and inclusive recovery and development.
Link to Data Set
Citation
World Bank. 2025. Blue Economy for Resilient Africa Program Overview. Blue Economy for Resilient Africa Program. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/42988 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Report Series
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    Jobs and Livelihoods in the Blue Economy
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-17) World Bank
    The World Bank Group supports climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resilience by promoting Blue Economy job growth in Africa and worldwide. From climate-smart and resilient urban development to improving economic participation and decision-making for marginalized groups, the World Bank Group works with a broad toolkit of financing solutions to support governments with on-the-ground development and institutional strengthening. The challenge is how to combine growing the Blue Economy with providing jobs for Africa’s working-age population, which is expected to grow to 450 million people by 2035. Critical governance and policy reforms for Africa’s Blue Economy include building public-sector capacity, aligning economic interests with long-term sustainability, and promoting conditions that encourage business growth in a sustainable seafood sector. Measuring the success of reforms on jobs and livelihoods can be challenging. Still, cutting-edge blue economy thinking reveals itself when the restoration of mangroves, seagrass beds, and dune vegetation, for example, is combined with successful climate-smart job and livelihood support in Africa.
  • Publication
    Blue Economy
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-08) Damianova, Adriana; Klimanova, Oxana; Leontev, Sergey; Minasyan, Gayane; Nemova, Vladislava; Pogozheva, Maria; Smetanina, Marina
    The policy note focuses on the well-established coastal- and marine-based sectors, such as recreational tourism and fisheries, that make a significant contribution to the economy of Krasnodar Krai and where challenges and unsustainable patterns could undermine their growth ambitions and translate into missed economic opportunities. It also discusses the critical importance of protecting the coastal and marine ecosystem from marine litter as well as ways to preserve the substantial economic opportunities that could be derived from a healthier coastal and marine space. Information on pollution in the Black Sea that stems from other sources, such as untreated effluents and oil spills, is intentionally limited in order to expand the focus on plastic litter as a global and regional challenge that needs country-specific measures. The World Bank has recently launched the ‘Blueing the Black Sea’ (BBSEA) program aiming to reduce pollution in the Black Sea through a set of complementary activities that include a thorough analysis of the sea’s current contaminants. The BBSEA will support the Black Sea countries in the implementation of the Common Maritime Agenda (CMA) for prioritizing and catalyzing blue economy investments in the Black Sea basin. More specifically, the program aims to strengthen economic, technical, and communication tools to promote regional collaboration and private sector engagement in pollution prevention in the Black Sea. However, the ambition of the BBSEA is to progressively include all the Black Sea countries in this World Bank initiative beyond the initial four, Turkey, Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova, through additional resources. For Krasnodar Krai, there are multiple opportunities for learning and knowledge exchange in the technical assistance format of the BBSEA that could help support the implementation of the specific recommendations in this policy note.
  • Publication
    Beyond Extractives: Unlocking Mauritania’s Potential for a Sustained, Inclusive and Resilient Growth
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-25) World Bank
    Mauritania’s extractive-led development path has run its course. A comprehensive and actionable set of reforms can unlock job creation and deliver a diversified, resilient, and inclusive growth path to reach Upper Middle-Income Country (UMIC) status by 2050. These are centered on three main pillars: (i) building a robust foundation of physical, human, and natural capital; (ii) creating a predictable regulatory environment; and (iii) fostering a dynamic private sector, that will foster stronger and better job creation by the non-extractive sectors, such as energy, agribusiness, and tourism (Table O.1). Strengthening Mauritania’s foundational infrastructure requires modernizing payment systems, scaling-up investment in early childhood education, boosting women’s workforce participation, and expanding fiscal resources for climate adaptation and mitigation investments. Also, reforms such as establishing and operationalizing an independent anti-corruption agency, revising the 2004 Labor Code to simplify hiring and eliminate gender bias, implementing an electronic land management system, and enforcing the new competition law will help create a stable regulatory environment that supports business and job growth. To support a dynamic private sector, policies should focus on better access to finance, smoother technology transfer, and innovation-friendly environments. This includes investing in STEM, creating efficient credit bureaus and registries, and developing demand-driven skills training systems (TVET).
  • Publication
    Ghana: A Blue Carbon Readiness Assessment
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-11-05) World Bank
    Blue Carbon ecosystems, as powerful carbon sinks, can play a vital role in supporting economies, jobs, and livelihoods. For these reasons, the World Bank Group prepared the flagship report Unlocking Blue Carbon Development: Investment Readiness Framework for Governments, which aims to support governments on their pathway towards Blue Carbon readiness and to scale up public and private sector investments in coastal Blue Carbon. Ghana is a country with a high potential for accelerating Blue Carbon action and support, including through carbon finance. It already has experience in carbon finance in general, notably under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, as well as in results-based finance, notably REDD plus. This puts Ghana in the list of countries where the global Blue Carbon Readiness Framework is not a concept but a tested reality. This report, Ghana: A Blue Carbon Readiness Assessment, applies the global Blue Carbon Readiness Framework to help Ghana further tap its Blue Carbon potential by addressing technical, institutional, regulatory, and financial challenges in parallel.
  • Publication
    Charting Croatia‘s Blue Economy Pathways
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-04-11) World Bank
    With an accessible and attractive coastline of untouched natural splendor, Adriatic Croatia is a strategic driver of national economic development. It boasts rich cultural heritage and biodiversity and abundant coastal and marine resources providing the country with high socioeconomic value. A decade of strong growth of maritime tourism has fueled stable economic development in the coastal zone. Despite this progress, Adriatic Croatia faces multiple environmental challenges stemming from anthropogenic pressures and climate change. Negative impacts from over-tourism, urbanization, and pollution underline the urgency of adopting a sustainable maritime economy approach. The demographic decline and the lack of economic diversification could diminish future economic opportunities of Adriatic Croatia to grow sustainably and provide new jobs. The emerging challenges call for close attention in the context of the national development goals, sustainable development commitments and Croatia’s aspiration to achieve blue growth. This report discusses the concept of blue economy while trying to understand and define the impacts of current challenges on the Republic of Croatia’s transition to blue economy.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Publication
    Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21) Luna-Bazaldua, Diego; Levin, Victoria; Liberman, Julia; Gala, Priyal Mukesh
    This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.
  • Publication
    Argentina Country Climate and Development Report
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11) World Bank Group
    The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.
  • Publication
    World Development Report 2006
    (Washington, DC, 2005) World Bank
    This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.
  • Publication
    Digital Africa
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13) Begazo, Tania; Dutz, Mark Andrew; Blimpo, Moussa
    All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.
  • Publication
    Tunisia Country Climate and Development Report
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-11-29) World Bank Group
    This Climate Change and Development Report (CCDR) establishes the case for a new economic model to address Tunisia’s challenging economic and social context and vulnerability to climate change. Building on extensive analyses and consultations (see Box 1 for our approach), the CCDR calls for a new model that emphasizes the role of the private sector in generating most jobs, while the state focuses on its regulating function, funding expenditures with the highest social and economic returns, and directing resources to interventions that are both economically and environmentally sustainable. The proposed model would involve major changes, such as using pricing to rationalize the consumption of resources and creating economic conditions that support private investments in climate adaptation and decarbonization. It would also involve a shift from recurrent public expenditures to public investments in adaptation and decarbonization.