The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are unlikely to be met by 2015, even if huge increases in development assistance materialize. The MDGs are a set of quantitative, time-bound targets for indicators such as poverty, education and mortality in developing countries adopted unanimously by the...

The Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) is the latest phase of debt reduction for poor countries from the World Bank, the IMF, and the African Development Bank. The MDRI, which will come close to full debt reduction for at least 19 (and perhaps as many as 40) qualifying countries, is...

Ghana can be considered a relative success story in Africa. We cite six variables - peace and stability, democracy and governance, control of corruption, macroeconomic management, poverty reduction, and signs of an emerging social contract - to suggest the country’s admirable political and...

Nigeria is currently classified by the World Bank as a "blend" country, making it the poorest country in the world that does not have "IDA-only" status. This paper uses the World Bank's own IDA eligibility criteria to assess whether Nigeria has a case for reclassification. Given that the country...

The world has increasingly recognized that private capital has a vital role to play in economic development. African countries have moved to liberalize the investment environment, yet have not received much FDI. At least part of this poor performance is because of lingering skepticism toward...

Many of the world's poorest and most fragile states are joining the ranks of oil and gas producers. These countries face critical policy questions about managing and spending new revenue in a way that is beneficial to their people. At the same time, a growing number of developing countries have...

Ghana's largest and most important creditor for the past three decades has been the International Development Association (IDA), the soft loan window of the World Bank. That will soon come to an end. The combination of Ghana's rapid economic growth and the recent GDP rebasing exercise means that...

Zimbabwe is embarking on a long, complex, and difficult journey to rebuild its economy, which has been shattered by years of neglect and destructive government policies. If the final political hurdles are overcome hopefully sooner rather than later - the new coalition government will be faced...

Investors diversify their portfolios to boost returns and manage risk. However, the benefits of diversifying across geographic regions are reduced if markets are highly correlated. This paper examines trends over the past two decades and finds, as expected from global market integration, that...

In this paper, we apply a novel analytical technique—k-means clustering—to understand the relationship between the growth of firms and the availability of power in sub-Saharan Africa. We develop a classification of firms and show how firm clusters are distributed across industries and...