The Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD) has produced continent-wide analysis of many aspects of Africa's infrastructure challenge. The main findings were synthesized in a flagship report titled Africa's Infrastructure: a time for transformation, published in November 2009. Meant for...

This study is a product of the Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic (AICD), a project designed to expand the world's knowledge of physical infrastructure in Africa. The AICD provides a baseline against which future improvements in infrastructure services can be measured, making it possible...

A substantive literature suggests that migration generates benefits for migrants, the host societies, and the countries of origin. The economic benefits for the countries of origin are realized primarily through the receipt of remittances. These large and stable resource flows remained...

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been a remarkable success in Africa. Across the continent, the availability and quality of service have gone up and the cost has gone down. In just 10 years dating from the end of the 1990s mobile network coverage rose from 16 percent to 90...

Economic growth in the Latin America and the Caribbean region has picked up considerably during the past decade or so. This growth has been aided by widespread (earlier and more recent) investments in power generation, transmission, and distribution that increased the provision of electricity...

For middle-income and developing countries as well as some industrial nations a major challenge for building and sustaining successful research universities is determining the mechanisms that allow those universities to participate effectively in the global knowledge network on an equal basis...

The size, resources, and location of the Democratic Republic of Congo have an impact on all of Central Africa. The country has unexplored mining resources, massive agricultural potential, and a population of more than 60 million inhabitants. The second largest country in Sub-Saharan Africa, the...

The private sector is the engine of economic growth, stimulating entrepreneurship and innovation and promoting competition and productivity. While many countries in Africa have developed private sector-driven growth strategies, private investment as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP)...

The past half-century has seen enormous changes in the demographic makeup of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). In the 1950s, LAC had a small population of about 160 million people, less than today's population of Brazil. Two-thirds of Latin Americans lived in rural areas. Families were...

Biofuels offer new opportunities for African countries. They can contribute to economic growth, employment, and rural incomes. They can become an important export for some countries and provide low-cost fuel for others. There is also a potentially large demand for biofuels to meet the rapidly...