Imagine landing your dream engineering role at one of Silicon Valley’s top technology companies – from your apartment in Riyadh, Cairo, or Beirut. This dream is now within reach for thousands in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), provided they have the right skills.
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Education is a foundation for good jobs and the surest way out of poverty. We know a good education equips learners with important foundational skills—literacy, numeracy, and socio-emotional competencies—which are essential for work and life. These skills help today’s children become tomorrow’s productive workers and enable workers to reskill or upskill later in life.
Continue readingWASHINGTON, August 23, 2025— The World Bank has approved a US$ 47.9 million grant, funded by the Global Partnership for Education Fund, to help improve girls’ and boys’ participation at pre-primary and primary levels in Pakistan’s Punjab province. The new support is expected to improve learning outcomes at the primary level and strengthen remedial learning support at the elementary level of schooling.
The “Getting Results: Access and Delivery of Quality Education Services and System Transformation in Punjab Project” will expand early childhood education, re-enroll out-of-school children, strengthen teacher support, and improve the education sector’s responsiveness to climate change and emergencies.
Continue reading“Credit: World Bank Group. All rights reserved”
The 2025 International Day of Education inspires reflectionson the power of education to equip individuals and communities navigate, understand and influence technological advancement. This year the focus is “AI and Education: Preserving Agency in a World of Automation.”
Continue readingABIDJAN, December 5, 2024 – With support from the World Bank Group, Côte d’Ivoire will complete a debt-for-development swap, a transaction designed to improve the country’s debt profile and generate significant fiscal savings. The money saved by replacing expensive debt with cheaper financing will be used to improve education across the country. This will be the first debt-for-development swap of its kind supported by the World Bank Group.
About 3 months ago (September 2024) I started my position at the Dutch executive 
director’s office at the World Bank. Coming from the NL Ministry of Finance, my previous job was coordinating the team responsible for World Bank, IMF and G20 matters where my focus was on the World Bank and sovereign debt. Great to be at the Bank now and to remain engaged – albeit in a different role – in the leading multilateral development bank.
In previous roles at the Ministry of Finance I focused on the European Investment Bank and on the NL budget. My expertise is in financial issues (capital increases, domestic resource mobilization, illicit financial flows, financial instruments). No surprises there when looking at my background.
At the Bank I will continue to cover those issues and IDA, climate including biodiversity & nature and procurement.
Less than an hour after landing in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Wednesday last week we were 
already at the National Emergency Operation Center of the Direction Générale de la Protection Civile discussing how the International Development Association (IDA) can help strengthen the country’s disaster risk management capacity. Remarkably, the center was launched in May 2024 despite the ongoing security and political crisis at the time, demonstrating the resilience of the IDA program implementation in Haiti. We witnessed similar results in other programs and during the field visit to the Southern Peninsula, where IDA projects are having a visible impact on the lives of the Haitian residents of that area.
Biodiversity conservation is vital for sustainable development, poverty alleviation, 
and a livable planet. It sustains ecosystems that support human livelihoods, particularly in developing nations, by providing essential resources like food, clean water, and climate stability. Healthy ecosystems are crucial for agriculture, fishing, and forestry, which reduce poverty and foster sustainable economic growth. Additionally, biodiversity fuels industries such as ecotourism and pharmaceuticals, generating jobs and income. Maintaining biodiversity strengthens ecosystem resilience, stabilizes climate, and mitigates climate change impacts, making it key to environmental health and global sustainability.
Netherlands for the World Bank 
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