Using regulatory impact analysis to improve decision making in the ICT sector

Published in 2014

Regulatory impact analysis (RIA) is defined as a systematic, structured, evidence-based analysis of the prospective impacts of a proposed policy measure against possible alternatives. First launched in the US in 1981, it has been heavily promoted by international organizations such as the OECD and the World Bank in the past three decades, and has seen successful implementation in a number of developed and also developing economies. The adoption and implementation of RIA can promote the efficiency, transparency and accountability of government action. However, implementing RIA is also challenging from a procedural and methodological viewpoint, and many countries have failed to…

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Morocco 2040 Emerging by Intangible Capital

Published in 2013

The new World Bank Country Economic Memorandum on Morocco, Emerging by Investing in Intangible Capital, is remarkable for at least three reasons: It is primarily a prospective report. Considering, like Fernand Braudel, that the future cannot be predicted, but has to be prepared, this Memorandum proposes ways to build Morocco in 2040, and favors convergence with the countries of Southern Europe, a scenario dear to IPEMED since its project Mediterranean 2030. And the stakes are high, since the per capita GDP of Morocco could reach 45 percent of that of Southern Europeans in 2040, versus 22 percent currently. It is…

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Broadband Strategies Handbook

Published in 2012

The world is shifting from narrowband to broadband. Services that were only available in the form of static, text-based websites 10 years ago are now offered in full-motion, high-definition video. Usage-based transmission prices that were once prohibitive are now bundled into an affordable monthly “all you can eat” charge. A decade after the dot.com bubble burst because network realities had not yet caught up with user aspirations, a whole new generation of Internet entrepreneurs is ready to take their ideas to the stock market. Nevertheless, a gap remains between the developed and the developing world when it comes to broadband.…

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Information and Communications for Development: Maximizing Mobile

Published in 2012

Mobile phones, a rarity in many developing countries at the turn of the century, now seem to be everywhere. Between 2000 and 2012, the number of mobile phones in use world- wide grew from fewer than 1 billion to around 6 billion. The mobile revolution is transforming livelihoods, helping to create new businesses, and changing the way we communicate. The mobile phone network is already the biggest machine the world has ever seen, and now that machine is being used to deliver development opportunities on a scale never before imagined. During this second decade of the new millennium, maximizing the…

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Science, Technology, and Innovation in Uganda : Recommendations for Policy and Action

Published in 2011

Between 2006 and 2010 the World Bank sought to unmask the role of science, technology, and innovation in Ugandan industry. This report presents insights from this research based on case studies of six sectors: agriculture, health, energy, information and communication technology (ICT), transport, and logistics. Based on more than 80 interviews cutting across Uganda’s small and medium-sized enterprises, universities, and government entities, the report’s findings are intended to offer the government and its partners in industry increased clarity about how better to harness science, technology, and innovation to propel the economy. Enabling implementation of the recent Uganda National Science, Technology,…

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Poor Places, Thriving People: How the Middle East and North Africa Can Rise Above Spatial Disparities

Published in 2011

It is now well known that the clustering of production in major cities is a driving force of economic growth. However, the governments of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are determined to make sure that their citizens benefit from their national development no matter where they live. The principle of economic justice makes wide gaps in living standards between leading and lagging areas politically intolerable. So the key question is this: how can MENA reap the benefits of economic agglomeration while mitigating geographic disparities in well-being? It is hard for policy makers to find straightforward advice on lagging…

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Partenariats public-privé dans le secteur des infrastructures : guide pratique à l’intention des décideurs publics

Published in 2010

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World Development Indicators 2010

Published in 2010

The Millennium Declaration, adopted unanimously by world leaders at the United Nations in September 2000, was not the first effort to mobilize global action to end poverty. The First United Nations Development Decade, proclaimed in 1961, drew attention to the great differences among development outcomes and called for accelerating growth. Subsequent Development Decades formulated new development strategies. But not until the 1990s did a consensus emerge that eliminating poverty, broadly defined, should be at the center of development efforts. Analytical work at the World Bank (World Bank 1990) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP 1990) shaped a view of…

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Telecommunications Regulation Handbook

Published in 2010

Telecommunications are a means to an end. That end, for The World Bank, is a world free of poverty. We live in a world where, infamously, more Africans have access to a mobile phone than to a plumbed toilet. When I consider today s communications landscape, it is almost unrecognizable compared to the environment in which we developed the first Telecommunications Regulation Handbook ten years ago. I am reminded of the remark by writer William Gibson; The future is here already. It s just unevenly distributed. The future of telecommunications is being written in SMS and IP, and implemented in…

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Awakening Africa’s Sleeping Giant : Prospects for Commercial Agriculture in the Guinea Savannah Zone and Beyond

Published in 2009

For the foreseeable future, reducing poverty in Africa will depend largely on stimulating agricultural growth. Within agriculture, a powerful driver of growth is commercial agriculture. Commercial agriculture can develop along a number of pathways, yet many developing regions have not progressed very far along any of these. African agriculture continues to lag, as reflected in the erosion during the past 30 years in the international competitiveness of many traditional African export crops, as well as in the competitiveness of some food crops for which import dependence has increased. In contrast, over the same period two relatively backward and landlocked agricultural…

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