Wijnand van Ijssel became a secondant at the World Bank Group after 10 years at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague in 2016 for a period of 3 years to h
elp lead the Food 4 All Partnership initiative between the Netherlands and the World Bank Group, this article shares the most important outcomes from his placement period.
Category Archives: WBG News & Reports
Rethinking Energy Sector Reforms in a Power Hungry World
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Rethinking Power Sector Reform is a multiyear initiative to refresh the policy debate in the power sector by presenting a comprehensive picture of the reform experiences in developing countries since the 1990s
- Reflecting on these findings and how recent technological trends are disrupting the sector and sparking the need for new strategies, the report points to major policy implications for the future.
Health Technology and the World Bank Group
On October 11, at the Human Capital Summit 2018 Philips CEO Frans van Houten co-
signed an open letter, to the world community highlighting the need for greater investment in human capital – the knowledge, skills, and health that people accumulate throughout their lives – through better nutrition, health care, education, jobs and skills. The publication of the open letter coincided with the launch of the World Bank Group’s Human Capital Index – a simple but effective metric for human capital outcomes such as child survival, early hard wiring of children for success, student learning, and adult health. Philips has made a commitment to improve the lives of 3 billion people by 2030. We are working with the World Bank Group (among others) to reach this goal.
Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO.nl)
August 1st the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO.nl) launched the new and improved 
website. This is part of a bigger communication strategy to provide more information and increase awareness of Dutch entrepeneurs/businesses and Netherlands Enterprise Agency activities. Through practical stories and interviews with the Dutch Network abroad and RVO, entrepreneurial successes are communicated using online platforms YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and online Dutch news paper Financieel Dagblad, around the world.
Making infrastructure work for both women and men
Despite decades of progress, the global infrastructure gap is still significant: around 
940m people live without electricity, 2.2bn lack safely managed water, 4.2bn lack safely managed sanitation facilities and 1bn live more than 2 km away from an all-season road.
This gap has a different meaning for women: infrastructure is not gender-neutral. For instance, it is well documented that women are responsible for obtaining water for domestic use in most countries, which has a big impact on how they spend their time. In Niger, the average time women and girls spend fetching water adds up to 13 days a year.
Is education ready to work in data-intensive environments?
What do initiatives such as personalized and adaptive learning, chatbots for education, 
automatic translators or the use of predictive learning analytics have in common? All of them are components of a ‘data-driven education’.
In many countries, there is a clear interest in expanding the role of digital technologies in education, which inevitably is leading towards more data-intensive educational systems. With the growing interest for adaptive intelligent tutoring systems offering natural language interaction, tools for predicting school dropout or new automated systems to boost student recruitment, it is likely that the importance of data-intensive technologies for education will increase in the years to come.
The World Bank’s Development Economics Research Group is Hiring
I can hear you saying, “Well, the Bank’s research department is hiring every year, what’s 
the difference and why are you yelling about it here?” You have a point – let me explain…
It is true that we are on the job market hiring every year, but this year is a bit different. First, we will be in the market to hire a significant number of researchers. While it is not prudent to give an exact number, I can say that we will be shortlisting and interviewing a substantially larger number of candidates at the AEA meetings in San Diego than we have in recent years.
In South Asia, the case for road safety investment is stronger than ever
The global road safety crisis has reached epidemic proportions. Every year, according to 
the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates, some 1.35 million people lose their lives on the road , and millions more sustain serious injuries that often result in permanent disability.
Despite growing awareness, the numbers keep creeping up. The situation is particularly alarming in low and middle-income countries, where economic growth has boosted vehicle ownership and road construction, but road safety action hasn’t kept pace.
What holds back about half of the world’s population from using the internet?
Over half of the world’s population — an estimated 4.3 billion people — now use the 
Internet, and 90 percent of all people are covered by at least basic data services. Some countries have very high levels of internet usage; the members of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a group of advanced economies, have 84 percent individuals using the internet. Some countries, such as Iceland or South Korea, count almost everyone as users. But what of the rest of the world? What holds back about half of the world’s population from using the internet?
Quality Unknown: The Invisible Water Crisis
The world faces an invisible crisis of water quality. Its impacts are wider, deeper, 
and more uncertain than previously thought and require urgent attention.
While much attention has focused on water quantity – too much water, in the case of floods; too little water, in the case of droughts – water quality has attracted significantly less consideration. Quality Unknown shows that urgent attention must be given to the hidden dangers that lie beneath the water’s surface:
Netherlands for the World Bank 
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