Over the past decade, Africa has been experiencing an economic resurgence. Yet, the continent is facing several difficult challenges and many economies of the region continue to be among the least competitive in the world. Africa's competitiveness is adversely affected by: (i) poor regional...

Although development generally refers to a broad concept, the quest for development in Sub-Saharan Africa has been biased by ideological considerations which made abstraction of local conditions and people's aspirations. The prevalent development models have used increased national income as a...

This paper reviews the state of knowledge on the effectiveness of donor interventions aimed at improving the regulatory environment for private sector development in developing countries. Where regulatory reform is undertaken, the expectation is that there will be improvements to economic and...

The sub-Saharan Africa region recorded the fastest conversion of forest land to agriculture in the past 20 years. The region also has the widest yield gap and together with Latin America and Caribbean has the largest unused arable land. However, there are wide variations across countries and...

Agriculture is a main contributor to pro-poor growth in Africa, but gender inequalities in the sector hold back agricultural growth and affect household welfare negatively. The sector has been characterized by a lack of gender-disaggregated data and patchy gender-integration in policies and...