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 report focuses on the social safety net, particularly cash and in-kind transfers. The safety net can play an important role in addressing poverty and vulnerability; however, the process by which the safety nets have been developed in Swaziland has produced a fragmented system that leaves...

Macroeconomic management in Chad, Mali and Niger needs to account for a number of specific parameters. Very rapid population growth exerts immense pressure on the demand for education and health services. Economic activity and prices are strongly influenced by climatic variations, and exports...

In 2006-07, the Water and Sanitation Program-South Asia (WSP-SA) initiated a research toidentify barriers to service delivery for the urban poor. The research included a review ofvarious initiatives from across the globe that have resulted in improved service delivery for theurban poor and...

The objective of this Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) is to demonstrate the current development challenges and opportunities facing Ghana, and offer a set of priority areas of intervention to accelerate economic growth and achieve the twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared...

Global growth is broadly stable but downside risks from rising trade tensions are increasing.A weakening recovery in trade and manufacturing activities is weighing down global growth. Global goods trade has decelerated more rapidly than expected. U.S. tariff s and the retaliatoryresponses of its...

The Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) for Malawi provides the analytical foundation for country-level actions and investments to foster progress towards the World Bank Group (WBG) Twin Goals as well as the country's national goals. The main purpose of the SCD is to identify the key challenges...

Angola is endowed with significant natural wealth, but it will need to better manage these resources and reinvest them into other forms of capital to establish a sustainable development path. Before independence, the country was a relatively advanced economy with diverse exports, although its...

Ethiopia's real gross domestic product (GDP) growth, while still strong, decelerated to 7.7 percent in FY2018. A slowdown in industrial growth, mainly driven by lower growth in construction due to foreign exchange shortages and higher prices of imported construction materials, coupled with...

The Kenyan economy rebounded in 2018 and economic activity in the first quarter of 2019 was healthy, although emerging drought conditions could curtail GDP growth for the remainder of the year. The economy expanded by 6.0 percent in the first three quarters of 2018 compared to 4.7 percent during...