Lesotho is one of the poorest and most
unequal countries in the world. It is a small, mostly
mountainous, and largely rural country of about 2 million
people, completely surrounded by South Africa. The
persistence of poverty and rising inequality are striking
for an economy that grew at annual rates of 4 percent per
capita over the past decade. Redefining the role of the

The systematic country diagnostic (SCD)
is designed to identify the most critical binding
constraints and opportunities facing Indonesia in ending
extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. In line with
the World Bank Group’s (WBG’s) new country engagement model,
the findings of the SCD will provide inputs for the
preparation of the country partnership framework (CPF),
which will outline the WBG’s engagement with Indonesia to

Colombia has made impressive strides in
reducing poverty and promoting shared prosperity during the
last decade. Extreme poverty fell from 17.7 percent in 2002
to 8.1 percent in 2014, while total poverty (including
moderate poverty) fell from 49.7 percent in 2002 to 29.5
percent in 2014. The decline implies that 6.2 million people
left poverty in the period. The multidimensional poverty
rate, which takes into account education, health, labor,

This systematic country diagnosis (SCD)
for Chad aims to identify how to achieve the twin goals of
ending poverty and improving shared prosperity. It
acknowledges both: (i) the need for selectivity in pro-poor
interventions, and (ii) the inherent difficulty to do so
given the many competing binding reasons for poverty.
Selectivity means the identification of principal
opportunities for sustainable poverty reduction in the next

The Tunisia Systematic Country
Diagnostic (SCD) seeks to identify the challenges and
opportunities to achieve the twin goals of reducing poverty
and boosting shared prosperity in a sustainable way. This
SCD takes into account Tunisia’s historical sociopolitical
context and the political economy of past reforms to provide
the context for the challenges and opportunities that exist
today to make progress toward the twin goals. The economic

Between 2002 and 2012-13, most of the
reduction in poverty was due to increased earnings, as
opposed to higher employment or higher transfers. Although
it is hard to be certain, increases in earnings are
associated with: (i) a slow structural transformation away
from agriculture and into industry and services that led to
productivity increases; (ii) agglomeration around key urban
areas that supported this structural transformation; (iii)

This document presents the Systematic
Country Diagnosis (SCD) for Mali. The SCD was prepared
following a consultative process within and outside the
World Bank. It identifies constraints and opportunities for
achieving the twin goals of ending poverty and improving
shared prosperity by 2030 while acknowledging (i) the need
for selectivity in pro-poor interventions, and (ii) the many
competing ‘binding’ reasons for poverty in Mali. The

The World Bank Group was a principal founding partner of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in its pilot phase in 1991, and of the restructured GEF in 1994. The Bank plays three different roles in the GEF: (a) as trustee of the GEF and related trust funds, (b) as implementing agency, including the implementation of private-sector GEF projects by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and (c) as the host organization of the functionally independent GEF secretariat.

This study exploits a natural experiment
to investigate the impact of land reform on the fertility
outcomes of households in rural Ethiopia. Public policies
and customs created a situation where Ethiopian households
could influence their usufruct rights to land via a
demographic expansion of the family. The study evaluates the
impact of the abolishment of these pronatal property rights
on fertility outcomes. By matching aggregated census data

Azerbaijan’s performance on the twin
goals has been commendable. The middle class has doubled in
size and extreme poverty has almost been eliminated in the
space of a decade. At the same time, regional differences
persist, with significantly higher poverty rates in lagging
regions, and Baku dominating overwhelmingly in terms of
share of GDP. Disparities in welfare also persist between
rural and urban areas as well as across social groups. As

The workshop, “System Analysis for Rangeland Management in Yabello”, involved multiple stakeholders analyzing the complex factors that affect rangeland condition and management, and considering implications for planning and decision-making around key issues. The workshop aimed to complement activities which are already ongoing including the planning being done by community Rangeland Councils in Yabello Woreda and elsewhere in Borena Zone.

Report on Potential Business Opportunities from Saline Water and Salt-affected Land Resources