After an impressive acceleration in growth and poverty reduction since the mid-1990s, many African countries continue to register robust growth in the aftermath of the global financial crisis. Will this growth persist, given the tepid recovery in developed countries, numerous weather shocks, and...

Africa will be undergoing substantial demographic changes in the coming decades with the rising working age share of its population. The opportunity of African countries to convert these changes into demographic dividends for growth and poverty reduction will depend on several factors. The...

The resilience of global value chains has been put to the test by the COVID-19 pandemic, extreme weather events, and trade tensions spurred by growing economic nationalism and protectionism. Shocks in production and trade can be transmitted from one country to another by global value chains,...

This paper explores the economic impacts of two related tracks of China's expected transformation-economic slowdown and rebalancing away from investment toward consumption-and estimates the spillovers for the rest of the world, with a special focus on Sub-Saharan African countries. The paper...

Evidence indicates that trade costs are a much more substantial barrier to trade than tariffs are, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper decomposes trade costs into: (i) trade facilitation, (ii) non-tariff barriers, and (iii) the costs of business services. The paper assesses the poverty...