Sao Tome and Principe (STP), a small island nation of 215,000 people in the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of Central Africa, is in many ways a country of great untapped wealth. One of Africa's least known countries, its striking volcanic landscape is home to virgin rainforests with rich...

Systematic Country Diagnostics (SCDs) analyze the most critical constraints and opportunities to ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner. The first SCD for Egypt was published in 2015. A lot has happened since then, so this SCD Update takes advantage of a...

This country economic memorandum aims to support Niger's efforts to walk on a path conducive to a resilient and sustainable economic growth. It does so by attempting to answer the following five questions, each of which constitutes a separate chapter: (i) what were the salient structural...

The district of Cox's Bazar, in southeastern Bangladesh, is an instructive context to understand how long-standing and newer growth opportunities and constraints manifest at the local level, remote from Bangladesh's major growth poles of Dhaka and Chittagong. Potentially exacerbating Cox's...

One of the key objectives of this first SCD of the Republic of Congo is to serve as an essential input to the Country Partnership Framework. The SCD is not intended to carry out substantial new analytical work, but rather to draw upon and synthesize the existing evidence. A substantial amount of...

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 main objective of this policy note is to assess key social protection and labor (SPL) policies, program expenditures and institutional arrangements in Cote d'Ivoire. The note aims to identify policy options for improving allocative and technical efficiency for key programs, including how to...