This report examines Ukraine's economic decline and development through the lens of technology upgrading. The technology upgrading framework assumes that economic growth is a function of technology capability, whereby upgrading occurs through technological, industrial, and organizational change....

Lesotho is a landlocked country with a population of about 2.0 million people. Lesotho's private sector makes limited use of digital technologies. In the private sector, digital technology can change the way economies of scale are achieved, particularly through e-commerce and digital payments....

Universal adoption and effective application of digital technologies are expected to characterize economies of the future, shaping their ability to succeed in the global marketplace and offer a better quality of life for their citizens. Disruptive technologies are already altering traditional...

Many Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, including Guinea-Bissau, lack the requisite enabling environment to capture a larger fraction of the global digital economy or benefit from its gains and are thus at increasing risk of being left behind. Rapid digital transformation is reshaping the...

The report presents both the opportunities of and the bottlenecks for furthering the digital agenda. It emphasizes that the first step is to get the basics right. This includes enabling access to and adoption of high-quality affordable broadband, initiating a paradigm shift in building digital...

This report examines the role of infrastructure in explaining why the region lags so far behind the rest of the country. More importantly, it looks at how improved infrastructure may help the region catch up. Infrastructure is examined here through its impact on social as well as economic...

The World Bank prepared three background studies as inputs for the development of the Cambodia Logistics Master Plan led by the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) in 2017-2018. These studies benefit from a close coordination and collaboration with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)...

The Mashreq countries must fully leverage digital infrastructure as well as their relative strengths in transforming their economies. The report lays out the strategic importance of digital infrastructure for countries in the region, takes stock of its status, and provides recommendations....

The Kyrgyz economy has been, since its earliest days, the most liberal and open among Central Asian countries resulting in an atypical structural transformation with limited productivity growth. It was the first Central Asian country to become a WTO member in 1998 and its trade share in GDP is...

Vietnam has demonstrated great and almost unrivaled development success over the past few decades as evidenced by a variety of measures, including national income, poverty reduction, and access to services. However, Vietnam's performance in terms of progress on robust, equitable and sustainable...