E-commerce, defined broadly as the sale of goods and services facilitated through the internet, is a key growth opportunity for Albania. Sellers can benefit from internet marketing, 24-hour online shopping and remote transaction settlement to reach more customers. Buyers, including both...

This study provides an early assessment of the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on e-commerce platforms and digital financial services, identifying the opportunities, good practices, and key challenges that have emerged in different regions. The focus of the study is to evaluate the impact of...

This study aims to provide guidance to the Government of Sierra Leone in how to translate investments in education into quality learning. It centers on teachers, the single most important predictor of the quality of an education system. Joyful, rigorous, and focused learning happens when...

This policy brief highlights the key messages for policy makers from the World Bank report "Seeing the Invisible: A Strategic Report on Groundwater Quality" (Ravenscroft and Lytton 2022a). This report and "A Practical Manual on Groundwater Quality Monitoring" (Ravenscroft and Lytton 2022b)...

This report presents detailed findings of a teacher performance study in Lebanon, one of four studies carried out under the Research for Results (R4R) program, a partnership between the Lebanese Ministry of Education and Higher Education and Development Partners. The objective of the research...

Myanmar exhibits poor health outcomes and lags regional peers. Myanmar's Human Capital Index (HCI) score is 0.47, compared to a regional average of 0.60. Every year, 2,000 pregnant women and 50,000 children die from preventable causes, and 29 percent of children under age 5 are stunted. While...

This note attempts to identify the factors associated with differences in overall school performance and efficiency. It draws on data from the Philippines Public Education Expenditure Tracking and Quantitative Service Delivery Study (PETS-QSDS), which tracked public education spending and...

Bangladesh has set up an ambitious target of attaining middle-income status by 2021. To achieve this objective, the economy needs to grow at a sustained rate of 7.5-8 percent annually and this would in turn require an increase in private investment to at least 26.6 percent of GDP from 22 percent...

This summary report presents the findings of the Ethiopia WASH Poverty Diagnostic (EWPD) study led by the World Bank`s Water and Poverty Global Practices. Though Ethiopia has made good progress in increasing access to water supply, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services in recent years, the...