OCT 09, 2019

Fair Competition Is Needed for the Economic Empowerment of Women in the Arab World

Female labor force participation levels in Arab countries are the lowest in the world—despite the rising educational attainment of women reaching working age. Indeed, young women ...

Ferid Belhaj, Rabah Arezki

OCT 07, 2019

Skilling up Bangladesh’s youth for a changing job market

In Bangladesh, unemployment stems more from lack of the right skills rather than scarcity of jobs. Soft skills can help create an adaptive nature and a lifelong learning culture, ...

Mustahsin-Ul Aziz

OCT 07, 2019

Are women and youth employment rates a matter of survey design and data quality?

Individual-level employment data are crucial to monitoring labor markets and SDGs, capturing socioeconomic conditions and informing labor market policies, and are key priorities in ...

Valentina Costa

OCT 04, 2019

The sky is not the limit: Satellites in support of smallholder farming (part 2)

The increased availability of free and open satellite imagery is opening a world of new possibilities for the agriculture sector in developing countries.

Erick C.M. Fernandes

SEP 26, 2019

The sky is not the limit: Satellites in support of smallholder farming (part 1)

When you hear about satellite information in agriculture, you often imagine a farmer driving his tractor in a large field, with the help of a GPS and a fancy display showing the ...

Erick C.M. Fernandes

SEP 25, 2019

The private sector can be a powerful partner in West Africa and the Sahel

A vibrant private sector is a powerful driver of jobs and can underpin sustainable economic growth, fueling innovation and poverty reduction.

Akihiko Nishio

SEP 25, 2019

How can Bangladesh’s micro, small, and medium businesses thrive?

MSMEs are crucial to Bangladesh’s financial and economic development. Close to 99 percent of non-farm enterprises in the country are MSMEs. Reexamining outdated policies and ...

Mihasonirina Andrianaivo, Aminata Ndiaye

SEP 24, 2019

The private sector—an engine for growth and stability in fragile countries

In countries affected by fragility, conflict, and violence, the private sector plays a critical role in providing jobs and income. Inclusive and sustainable economic growth can ...

Martin C. Spicer, Franck Bousquet

SEP 14, 2019

How can alternative data help Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) access credit?

Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) play a huge role in facilitating economic development due to their flexibility and affinity to innovation.

Anja Robakowski-Van Stralen

SEP 12, 2019

Making farmers better off by tackling the whole of the value chain

There are a fair number of interventions out there that work with an entire value chain with a set of interventions.

Markus P. Goldstein

SEP 11, 2019

Leveraging economic migration for development

The publication describes how economic migration can be leveraged for development and what role could the World Bank Group and other MDBs play in that process

Dilip K. Ratha

AUG 19, 2019

Burkina Faso reclaims landscapes and livelihoods

By 2030, climate change could result in Africa’s drylands expanding by 20%, with larger increases in Sahelian countries.

Maria Sarraf

AUG 12, 2019

Meet 3 young leaders tackling youth unemployment

Globally, unemployment is hitting young people the hardest. The ILO estimates that youth unemployment rates are 300 percent higher than unemployment rates for adults over 25 years ...

Sonia Madhvani, Timothy Joseph Peter Clay

AUG 05, 2019

As incomes rise, farm employment drops

Globally, the proportion of people working in the agriculture sector has seen a steady decline. However, looking at global averages is not enough to understand this trend, as this decline has not been evenly distributed.

Miyoko Asai, Silvia Malgioglio

AUG 01, 2019

Measuring rural women’s employment in surveys: key issues for research and policy targeting

Rural economies are in transition as countries seek to boost productivity and growth in the face of rapid out-migration to urban areas, as well as a rise in smallholder farming.

Gayatri Koolwal

AUG 01, 2019

Innovative financial solutions critical for Bangladesh jobs and growth

Innovative financial solutions critical for Bangladesh jobs and growth - included in July 2019 FCI Newsletter

Mihasonirina Andrianaivo, Aminata Ndiaye

JUL 18, 2019

Rural non-farm activities in the Middle East and North Africa: a path to poverty reduction?

In the developing countries of the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) more than 60% of the population lives in urban areas. At the same time, poor people are ...

Aziz Atamanov, Sharad Alan Tandon

JUL 16, 2019

Social and Cultural Barriers Keep Young Women out of the Economy. But we can change that

Social and Cultural Barriers Keep Young Women out of the Economy. But we can change that

Danielle Simone Robinson, Sonia Madhvani

Nov 26, 2018

Game-changing technology empowers India’s women farmers

How Jeevika was able to “disrupt” exploitative market practices by leveraging technology platforms to connect women-farmers with markets and financing institutions

Paramveer Singh, Anjani Kumar Singh, Vinay Kumar Vutukuru, Mio Takada

JUL 26, 2018

Five new insights on how agriculture can help reduce poverty

The view that productive agriculture is critical for employment creation and poverty reduction is now widely shared within the development community

Luc Christiaensen, Will Martin

APR 12, 2019

Five facts about jobs and economic transformation in IDA countries

What are the pathways people follow to better jobs? Economies grow when more people find work, when they get better at what they do, and when they move from low-productivity work to better, higher-productivity jobs.

Dino Leonardo Merotto

OCT 24, 2018

Budding entrepreneurs in rural Bihar

The Agri-Entrepreneurship (AE) model follows a decentralized approach to empowering local youth as “Agri-entrepreneurs” (AE) who champion agriculture development in neighboring villages. Besides local self-employment, the model facilitates the delivery of services such as access to high-quality inputs, crop advisory, doorstep financial transactions, and aggregation of surplus produce for distant markets.

Vinay Kumar Vutukuru, Anjani Kumar Singh, Paramveer Singh

OCT 22, 2018

Growth in Central Asia hinges on creating more jobs with higher wages

Jobs and wage growth have been the most important driver of poverty reduction globally, and Central Asia. In Tajikistan, for example, it has cut poverty by about two-thirds since 2003. In Kazakhstan, it accounted for more than three-quarters of income growth over the past decade — even among the poorest 20 percent.

LILIA BURUNCIUC

MAR 18, 2019

Rising with rice in Côte d’Ivoire - More and better jobs by connecting farmers to markets

The challenges faced by the different actors within the rice value chain in Côte d’Ivoire while distinct, are also interconnected. How could we address these constraints so that the chain can reach its full potential and contribute to poverty reduction through more and better jobs?

Luc Christiaensen, Raphaela Karlen

NOV 12, 2018

In Africa, more, not fewer people will work in agriculture

Many people in Sub-Saharan Africa still work in agriculture; on average, over half of the labor force, and even more in poorer countries and localities. The share of the labor force in agriculture is declining (as is normal in development), leading African leaders and economists to focus on job creation outside agriculture.

Luc Christiaensen, Karen Brooks

OCT 16, 2018

Debunking three myths about Informality

Since the concept of the “informal sector” was coined half a century ago, countries all over the world have promoted the formalization of small- and medium-sized enterprises. The perceived benefits of formalization include better access to credit, justice, large formal clients, and, for the government, higher tax revenues. But according to recent literature, most formalization efforts resulted in modest and short-term increases informality rates.

Jamele Rigolini, Juan Chacaltana

JUN 20, 2018

How can we unlock the potential of household enterprises in Tanzania?

Non-farm household enterprises provide an important opportunity for employment in Tanzania. Agriculture is still the primary economic activity of the country, but the economy is shifting away from it, and the number of people employed in this sector has been declining since 2006.

Julia Granata, Maria Laura Sanchez Puerta, Odette Maciel, Mohamed Ihsan Ajwad

JUN 19, 2018

Agriculture is the ‘green gold’ that could transform the economy and the lives of Ugandan farmers

Agriculture is Uganda’s ‘green gold’ that can transform the economy and the lives of farmers. Why it is then that Uganda’s well documented agricultural potential is not realized? What specific public-sector policies and actions are required to unleash the entrepreneurial energy of Uganda’s largest private sector actors—its farmers?

Christina Malmberg Calvo

JUN 12, 2018

In South Asia, poor rural women have begun to set up lucrative new businesses

Across South Asia, our agriculture and rural development projects are helping transform the lives of poor rural women. From daily wage laborers, they are now becoming entrepreneurs who generate jobs for others. Over the last decade, these projects have supported an estimated 5 million micro and small entrepreneurs, most of whom are women.

Adarsh Kumar

SEP 19, 2017

Horticulture offers hope for growth and jobs in rural Afghanistan

Investments in agriculture, particularly horticulture, have produced tangible returns as unique weather conditions are favorable to growing produce that is in-demand in local and regional markets.

World Bank Afghanistan

SEP 06, 2017

Can agriculture create job opportunities for youth?

Technology and the internet are also opening opportunities for agriculture, and urbanization and changing diets are calling for new ways to process, market, and consume our foods. So, can agriculture provide job opportunities for youth?

Luc Christiaensen

NOV 21, 2017

Measuring youth employment projects: What can we learn from each other?

Youth employment projects face varying contextual realities and constraints that often result in generating innovations when adapting and customizing their monitoring and evaluation system. There is a lag in the spread of innovations due to the various contexts, funders, and organizations often operating independently.

Jose Manuel Romero

NOV 15, 2017

Accelerating and learning from innovations in youth employment projects

Innovations in youth employment programs are critical to addressing this enormous development challenge effectively. Rapid progress in digital technology, behavioral economics, evaluation methods, and the connectivity of youth in the developing world generates a stream of real-time insights and opportunities in project design and implementation.

Namita Datta, Jose Manuel Romero

JUN 15, 2017

How can Zambia create 1 million jobs?

Job creation has become a mantra in the country since the government has set the goal to create a million jobs in key sectors over the next five years under the Seventh National Development Plan.

Ina-Marlene Ruthenberg

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