This publication addresses the question of whether political, fiscal, and administrative decentralization improves government effectiveness and the debate on whether it is a viable and desirable state-building strategy for post-conflict countries. The publication is a collection of eight papers...

Foreword -- Acknowledgements -- Executive summary -- Post-conflict context -- Student enrollments, completion and transition -- Learning environment and outcomes -- Education expenditure and financing -- Disparity -- Education governance and management -- Improving education: the cost of policy...

When Sierra Leone emerged from its long civil war at the beginning of 2002, it had many pressing needs for recovery and reconstruction. As a consequence, Sierra Leone was one of the largest beneficiaries of foreign aid as a share of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and aid per capita. Since then, as...

Infrastructure development in the past was often implemented without adequately taking into consideration the possible negative environmental and social impacts. Drawing from the experience of the Bumbuna Hydropower project in Sierra Leone, this paper proposes to complement safeguard policies by...

Sierra Leone's devastating 11-year civil war destroyed much of its infrastructure, and left its economy in tatters. In 2004, two years after the end of the war, Sierra Leone asked the investment climate (IC) advisory services of the World Bank Group to help create a better business and...

This report is the final product of a project financed by a grant from the World Bank's Youth Innovation Fund developed in conjunction with representatives of the Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) spanning the period December 2011-June 2012. The report is an advisory document to assist the GoSL...

The Government of Sierra Leone (GOSL) has developed an ambitious plan in 2014 to reform civil registration in the country and to establish a national identity register. About 5 percent of people in Sierra Leone are registered in a national identity registry, managed by the National Registration...

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has set back the economy and fiscal balances of Sierra Leone, which are now further impacted by the war in Ukraine. Real gross domestic product (GDP) growth turned negative in 2020, while the government's efforts to reduce the fiscal deficit were undermined by...