Women play an important role in rural
economic activity but face severe constraints to
productivity and socioeconomic security. Nigeria's
agriculture sector employs 35 percent of women and up to 44
percent of female heads of households. Yet a number of
factors constrain the expansion and diversification of
agricultural activities, including fewer rights to land than
men, lower access to credit, and inequitable access to

The post-2015 development agenda is being shaped as we speak. The role of identity and identification
and its importance to development outcomes places it within the new Sustainable Development
Goals (SDG) agenda—specifically as one of the proposed SDG targets (#16.9), but also as a key enabler
of the efficacy of many other SDG targets. Although there is no one model for providing legal
identity, this SDG would urge states to ensure that all have free or low-cost access to widely accepted,

The World Bank (WB) supports the global
reporting initiative (GRI) and is one of the GRI chapter
groups of founding members. The topics deemed relevant for
disclosure were identified by assessing annual corporate
priorities outlined by the institutions’ Boards and
President, considering stakeholder input, as well as
ascertaining sustainability impacts of carrying out the
mission and vision. To determine if a GRI aspect is material

This paper examines the current status
of justice and dispute-resolution mechanisms in Bangladesh,
ranging from the formal justice system to the traditional
shalish (a form of dispute resolution), and focuses on the
costs and benefits of utilizing nongovernmental organization
(NGO)-led legal services programs as an alternative form of
justice delivery and dispute resolution for the poor, with a
focus on women and girls. In particular, this paper takes a

Industrial parks are as popular as they
are controversial, in India and globally. At their best they
align infrastructure provision and agglomeration economies
to jolt industrial growth. More often, they generate
negative spill-overs, provide handouts, sit empty, or simply
do not get built. This paper disaggregates how parks are
built and how they fail. It contextualizes parks in India,
followed by a thick case study of an innovative scheme that

Tanzania is largely an agriculture-based
economy. This sector accounts for over three-quarters of
national employment, and approximately 25 percent of gross
domestic product (GDP). The national agricultural input
voucher scheme (NAIVS) is a market smart input subsidy
program designed in response to the sharp rise in global
grain and fertilizer prices in 2007 and 2008. The main aim
of the program is to raise maize and rice production, and

This paper studies the credit market
implications and real effects of one the largest borrower
bailout programs in history, enacted by the government of
India against the backdrop of the 2008-2009 financial
crisis. The study finds that the stimulus program had no
effect on productivity, wages, or consumption, but led to
significant changes in credit allocation and an increase in
defaults. Post-program loan performance declines faster in

Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group, discusses how the
World Bank is focused on a prosperity that is shared by
everyone, and to lift the billion or so people living in
extreme poverty out of that condition so that they can have
those things that everybody in the world seems to want. He
speaks about the inequality in the economic growth of the
countries around the world. He highlights the health care

Despite extremely difficult security conditions, which deteriorated markedly after 2006, the World Bank Group has commendably established and sustained a large program of support to the country. While World Bank Group strategy has been highly relevant to Afghanistan's situation, beginning in 2006 the strategies can have gone further in adapting ongoing programs to evolving opportunities and needs and in programming activities sufficient to achieve the objectives of the pillars in those strategies.

Recent economic and political
developments have highlighted a challenge shared across the
Arab region of generating employment, promoting inclusive
growth, and improving competitiveness. In the short run,
weakened macroeconomic fundamentals in the developing
economies of the Middle East and North Africa are a key
challenge. The region's main challenge is to achieve
sustainable growth that delivers the quantity and quality of

The accumulation of decent housing
matters both because of the difference it makes to living
standards and because of its centrality to economic
development. The consequences for living standards are
far-reaching. In addition to directly conferring utility,
decent housing improves health and enables children to do
homework. It frees up women's time and enables them to
participate in the labor market. More subtly, a home and its

This First Phase Report on Sierra Leone
growth poles is the result of a 9 months consultative
process led by the Office of the President which
specifically requested that the output of this diagnostic be
in an engaging format. The fundamental concept of growth
poles is that they exploit agglomeration economies and
spillover effects to spread resulting prosperity from the
core of the pole to the periphery. At the basis of this