Author Archives: NL4WorldBank
Grantee Interview: Making Energy Subsidy Reforms Work for Women and Men
Sophia Georgieva, Social Development Specialist in the Europe and Central Asia region, was the 
lead author of the UFGE-funded study Toward Gender-Informed Energy Subsidy Reforms: Findings from Qualitative Studies in Europe and Central Asia. The report presents findings from eight countries on women’s coping strategies and challenges in interacting with public institutions in the face of rising energy costs. The study’s methodology has also been translated into a toolkit to provide a step-by-step guide to conducting qualitative assessments and stakeholder analyses to look more deeply into households’, individuals’, and group’s specific circumstances to better understand impacts on their lives and factors that drive their attitudes and decisions affected by energy policy decisions. Building on this work, Ms. Georgieva is contributing to the global Energy Subsidy Reform Assessment Framework, leading its component on qualitative research tools.
Other interesting reports:
Voices of Europe and Central Asia: New Insights on Shared Prosperity and Jobs
Gender innovation lab: EMPOWERING GIRLS TRIGGERS THEIR BROTHERS TO COMPETE
Improving Governance Is Key to Ensuring Equitable Growth in Developing Countries
WASHINGTON, January 30, 2017 – A new World Bank policy report urges developing 
countries and international development agencies to rethink their approach to governance, as a key to overcoming challenges related to security, growth, and equity.
The 2017 World Development Report: Governance and the Law explores how unequal distribution of power in a society interferes with policies’ effectiveness. Power asymmetries help explain, for example, why model anti-corruption laws and agencies often fail to curb corruption, why decentralization does not always improve municipal services; or why well-crafted fiscal policies may not reduce volatility and generate long-term savings.
Listening to Africa: A New Way to Gather Data Using Mobile Phones
The proliferation of mobile phones has opened up new opportunities for conducting surveys in developing countries. Data about people’s lives can now be gathered much cheaper and faster. The World Bank’s Listening to Africa initiative is now collecting household data through mobile phone surveys in African countries.
Water, the economy, and development: New insights on a complex challenge
In the World Bank Water Practice, we often talk about how issues like flooding and 
droughts threaten our mission to end poverty and boost shared prosperity. But how much do we actually know about how these floods and droughts – “water shocks” – impact farmers, firms, and communities? Perhaps adaptation in the economy has limited such impacts. Or maybe policies have led to economies being more vulnerable to such shocks.
eC2: Risk Communication Research for the Open Data for Resilience Initiative
Deadline: 08-Feb-2017 at 11:59:59 PM (Eastern Time – Washington D.C.)
This project seeks to document the third pillar of the work program, Using Data, similar to how OpenDRI has documented its first two pillars through the above publications. This pillar brings together ideas and efforts from the fields of risk communication, user-centered design, and civic technology to ensure that investments in generating, collecting and sharing data contribute to evidence-based and risk-informed policies, ideally causing change in policy and behavior. Further, the third pillar seeks to inform the ways in which OpenDRI designs projects falling under the first two pillars.
eC2:Water Utility Prefeasibility Study for Private and Public Debt Financing to Enhance the WSS Service Delivery in the Urban Area of Tegucigalpa
Deadline: 08-Feb-2017 at 11:59:59 PM (Eastern Time – Washington D.C.)
Design a business plan (BP) based on existing information on the SANAA, which will need to be validated to build an interactive financial model (FM) that will guide UMAPS in decision making with respect to the operation, maintenance and investments that will improve the quality of water and sanitation services as well as achieve financial and environmental sustainability.
eC2: Scaling Solar Ethiopia – Resource Measurement Campaign
Deadline: 07-Feb-2017 at 11:59:59 PM (Eastern Time – Washington D.C.)
The Scaling Solar program (see http://www.scalingsolar.org) aims to accelerate the roll-out of competitively priced, utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) power in Sub-Saharan Africa through a coordinated, packaged and largely standardised joint World Bank Group (World Bank, IFC, and MIGA) solution based on a templated Public Private Partnership (PPP) transaction. To date, four countries have signed up to the program and more countries are expected to follow shortly. In relation to Scaling Solar Ethiopia, IFC intends to hire a firm to provide reliable on-site measured solar resource data for an expected 3 separate sites in Ethiopia for a period of 1 year. The firm is to install, manage and maintain solar resource measurement stations at these sites in order to provide bankable solar resource data in line with the details to be provided in the terms of reference.
eC2:A BUSINESS TO CONSUMER-MARKET PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH TO IDENTIFY AND CONFIRM MARKET NEEDS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR FORTIFIED NUTRITIOUS FOODS.
Deadline: 13-Feb-2017 at 11:59:59 PM (Eastern Time – Washington D.C.)
IFC has invested in Africa Improved Foods (AIF)that is producing highly nutritious quality fortified foods to address the malnutrition among vulnerable population segments in East Africa. For more sustainable development in future the company is planning on increasing the focus from the current range of fortified porridge for pregnant and lactating mothers & infants over 6 months to commercial product range of nutritious general foods, while maintaining focus on international quality, local sourcing and affordability.
This will eventually help in diversifying cost and revenue streams by leveraging on better technology investment in the region. IFC requests for Expression of Interest (EoI) to identify, quantify and validate the opportunity for this potential product range in specific East Africa Markets (Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and DRC).
Increasing Salinity in a Changing Climate Likely to Alter Sundarban’s Ecosystem
Story Highlights
- The salinity of river water and soil in Bangladesh’s low-lying southwest coastal region is increasing over time, and will aggravate further with sea-level rise in a changing climate.
- The increase in salinity will reduce the Sunderbans’ key species Sundri, the forest’s highest-value timber species, and increase saline-tolerant species Gewa, Baen and Goran.
- The progressive water salinization will change the availability of many freshwater fish species, thereby depriving the poor of their main source of protein, and adversely impacting the incomes of families. The poor populations that will lose freshwater fish species are about six times greater in number than those who will be gaining brackish fish species.
Netherlands for the World Bank 
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