This engagement note provides education sector policymakers with an overview of the status of education across the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and offers insight into the World Bank's strategies and approaches to supporting education reform in the GCC region. While the Gulf...

The report is structured as follows. The next section introduces the theoretical notion of a 'virtual economy' and explains how it is distinct from other Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-related economic activities. The following sections describe in detail the main areas of the...

James D. Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank Group, discussed the global knowledge partnership, which is central to the Bank's work. The digital revolution brings opportunity. Knowledge can be transferred from developed to developing countries, but also that developing countries can exchange...

Demography affects our daily lives. Consciously or not, we take into account the demographic context when making choices on employment, savings, health, and education. This report studies how demographic change is likely to affect demand for social services in Southern Africa and how today's...

Ghana is an exceptional case in the Sub-Saharan Africa landscape. Together with a handful of other countries, Ghana offers the opportunity to analyze the distributional changes in the past two decades, since four comparable household surveys are available. In addition, different from many other...

This paper presents the initial findings from six rounds of research conducted between 2012 and 2016 on livelihoods and social change in rural Myanmar, undertaken as part of the Qualitative Social and Economic Monitoring initiative. These data provide unique insights into the ways in which broad...

This paper examines the contribution of international organizations to the development of the social enterprise sector worldwide, and assesses the types of programs and policies international organizations are using to promote this agenda globally. The results indicate that international...

A number of countries recently experienced protest organized by citizens that were in pursuit of accountability and openness from government. It was witnessed that social media played a highly important role in those events; among others, continuously providing updated information, establishing...

Bangladesh stands out as the shining new example in South Asia of a poor country achieving impressive gains in gender equality. Between 1971 and 2004, Bangladesh halved its fertility rates. In much of the country today, girls' secondary school attendance exceeds that of boys. The gender gap in...

This is a speech given by Mr. Wolfensohn to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, on January 27, 1998 at Addis Ababa. He presented a development agenda in Africa which covers: human resource development, capacity building, rural development and rural transformation, private sector...