Tag Archives: Africa

Tackling Food Insecurity

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Stories of resilience from Madagascar, the Central African Republic, and Egypt

We couldn’t even figure out how to face the next day or find food for our children.”
Volatsarasoa is a mother of four who lives in the village of Malangy, near the southern tip of Madagascar in one of the poorest regions in the country. With a fifth child on the way, she spends a lot of time thinking about a prosperous future for her children by learning from the experiences of her recent past.

When the El Niño phenomenon hit during the 2015-16 rainy season, Madagascar recieved just 50-80% of its normal precipitation – triggering a drought and crop yields that were 90% below normal.

“Me, my husband, and my children suffered a lot because there was no food, and we were starving. We barely ate, most of the time just a cup of rice for all of us, and only in the evening. It was very hard, and we couldn’t even figure out how to face the next day or find food for our children with everything going on I was worried. I was panicked.”

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Realizing a Brighter Future for a Young, Energized, and Connected Africa

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Indigenous Youth on Cultural Identity and a Livable Planet

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This year, the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples recognizes the efforts of Indigenous Youth to support sustainable development, along with their pursuit of justice and preservation of their culture and traditions. The World Bank interviewed Indigenous Youth leaders from Africa, Asia, and Latin America to hear their stories and deepen our understanding of their strategies.  While each have experienced unique circumstances, they face similar challenges that put at risk their capacity to sustain their peoples’ significant contributions to conserving the world’s rich cultural and biological diversity.

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Investing in Youth, Transforming Africa

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STORY HIGHLIGHTSafe-hc-summit

  • By 2075, one-third of the world’s population—and of the working-age population—will be African. It is the only region where the workforce will grow continuously in the coming decades.
  • This gives Africa an enormous opportunity to drive economic growth and prosperity through investments in education, skills, and health.
  • Africa’s Heads of State are gathering at the Africa Human Capital Heads of State Summit to discuss how to accelerate human capital accumulation, leverage the youth bulge, and create jobs to propel economic growth.

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Mission to Rewrite World Bank Group Playbook Advances with Banga’s Global Tour

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WASHINGTON, June 8, 2023—The World Bank Group announced today a months-long global tour for new president Ajay Banga, an early step in his mission to write a new playbook for the 78-year-old institution.

Between now and December 2023, Banga will visit multiple countries in every region where the World Bank Group operates. During the impact-focused tour, Banga will work to reimagine strategic partnerships with other multilateral banks and development organizations, work to identify barriers for private sector investment, deepen the relationships between the World Bank Group and the countries it serves, and identify opportunities to maximize impact through knowledge, financing, and technical assistance.

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Hiding in plain sight: The missing trillions for climate change

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In debates about how to finance the growing bill for climate change, many worry where we hero_factory.jpg can find the money.

There is reason to worry. As part of the Paris Agreement, the world’s wealthier countries reaffirmed their commitment to mobilize at least $100 billion of climate financing annually to help developing countries to adapt to climate change, invest in renewable energies and achieve low-carbon development. But getting there is a work in progress. 

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What Counts as Climate? Preliminary Evidence from the World Bank’s Climate Portfolio

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Dear Reader,

We wanted to let you know about our new study, published this week by the Center for Global Development and the Breakthrough Institute.

Climate finance at the World Bank is a hot topic, with major shareholders pushing for reforms that would have the Bank substantially expand its climate lending. But so far the discussion has focused much more on how much money the Bank can lend, rather than where that money is going.

With our colleague Guido Núñez-Mujica, we examined 2,554 projects between 2000 and 2022 that the World Bank includes in its climate portfolio, including 2,047 projects tagged specifically as climate mitigation. We found that the Bank has a climate portfolio skewed towards mitigation, both in middle-income countries and in energy-poor, low-income countries. 

We also found that hundreds of projects tagged climate—many in poorer countries—appear to have little to do with either climate change mitigation or adaptation, from teacher training to improving healthcare access for girls. $15 billion worth of the Bank’s climate finance portfolio is attributed to projects where climate accounts for less than 20 percent of the project’s value, and there typically is no climate rationale offered to support the climate tags in these cases. Further, most of the mitigation projects tagged as 100 percent climate lack estimates of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions, and there is no standardized reporting on GHG estimates across the portfolio.

What does this mean? It’s clear that reporting on climate programming at the Bank is still in its infancy. With immense pressure on the institution to scale up climate lending, it’s important that the Bank’s shareholders and climate advocates apply scrutiny to how the World Bank is spending its climate money, not just how it is raising it.

You can read the full paper here, and a shorter analysis of what we found here.

In Ghana, Sustainable Cocoa-Forest Practices Yield Carbon Credits

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STORY HIGHLIGHTSCocoaRodney-QuarcooWorld-Bank

  • Cocoa farmers in Ghana are improving yields and mitigating climate change by adopting climate-smart cocoa practices while curbing deforestation.
  • Ghana has earned $4.8 million for reducing nearly 1 million tons of carbon emissions caused by deforestation and forest degradation—with up to $45 million expected by the end of 2024.
  • Ghana and other countries are generating high-quality, high-integrity jurisdictional carbon credits to realize their climate goals and gain access to international carbon markets.

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The role of ethical leadership in curbing corruption

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As much as researchers try to isolate the factors of success in controlling corruption,blog-wbginstitutionsculture-hero-0623.jpg whether it be at a national scale or that of a particular organization, there is always a residual unexplained element. It may be attributed to culture, systems, or other factors, but one catalytic ingredient is almost always leadership.

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