The World Development Report (WDR) has become such a fixture that it is easy to forget the circumstances under which it was born and the Bank's motivation for producing such a report at that time. In the first chapter of this essay, the authors provide a brief background on the circumstances of...

This annual report of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) summarizes the innovation and leadership roles in the private sector during fiscal year 2012. The IFC invested a record $20.4 billion in 103 developing countries, reflecting a doubling of annual commitments over the last five...

There are more than 215 million international migrants in the world. Recorded remittances received by developing countries, estimated to be US$325 billion in 2010, far exceed the volume of official aid flows and constitute more than 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in many developing...

The region has been transformed by these developments, changing from a set of countries that rapidly integrated with the world to one that is also aggressively exploiting the sources of dynamism that lie within Asia. But countries in East Asia now face the domestic side-effects of rapid growth...

The specific structure of the book is as follows: chapter one reviews the current situation of Latin America, which historically has been a laggard in economic performance. Chapter two introduces the first principle: the urgency of developing a medium- to long-term strategy for productive...

This assessment, reflecting poverty's many dimensions in Mozambique, combines multiple disciplines and diagnostic tools to explore poverty. It draws on a combination of approaches and tools from three separate analytical diagnostics developed by the World Bank: poverty assessment, country gender...

The UK-Nigeria remittance corridor has an equal dominance of formal and informal remittance intermediaries. Although several formal financial institutions for transferring money exist in the UK, many people choose to send money informally. More collaboration between the UK and Nigeria is...

The World Bank Group Corporate Scorecard is designed to provide a high-level and strategic overview of the World Bank Group s performance toward achieving the two goals. It is the apex from which indicators cascade into the monitoring frameworks of the three World Bank Group institutions. The...

It is estimated that US$339 million to US$413 million was claimed in ransoms between April 2005 and December 2012 for pirate acts off the Horn of Africa. Twenty-first century piracy in this region has developed as a violent criminal act, which not only affects the victims but also has an impact...

Concentrating Solar Thermal power (CST) has a tremendous potential for scaling up renewable energy at the utility level, diversifying the generation portfolio mix, powering development, and mitigating climate change. At present, different CST technologies have reached varying degrees of...