In preparation for its 2019-2022 Country Partnership Framework with South Africa, the World Bank Group has drafted a Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) which forms the basis of this book. Its aim is to strengthen understanding of the constraints in achieving two goals in South Africa: to eliminate poverty by 2030, and to boost shared prosperity. These goals are enshrined in South Africa’s Vision 2030 in the National Development Plan.

This book is the result of consultations and conversations with key government departments, the National Planning Commission, the private sector, academics and trade unions. It identifies five broad policy priorities: to build South Africa’s skills base; to reduce the highly skewed distribution of land and productive assets; to increase competitiveness and the country’s participation in global and regional value chains; to overcome apartheid spatial patterns; and to increase the country’s strategic adaptation to climate change. The key obstacle to growth that has been identified is ‘the legacy of exclusion’.

Undoing this is a long-term process, but renewed commitment by the political leadership to strengthen institutions and rebuild the social contract present an enormous opportunity in achieving progress towards South Africa’s Vision 2030.

Just like nearly every aspect of human experience, crime, civil conflict, and violence have become increasingly global. Around the world, civil wars, of which there are more today than at any time since the end of World War II, displace greater numbers of people ever further from their countries of origin. Transnational terrorism has reached a 50-year high, in terms of both its incidence and the number of reported fatalities. Cross-border criminal markets—illicit drugs, human trafficking, wildlife trade, and so forth—take a heavy toll on the many societies they affect. This Policy Research Report, The Internationalisation of Crime, Conflict, and Violence, offers a unified framework to take stock of the theoretical and empirical literature on crime, conflict, and violence and to discuss how the international community organizes itself to address security as a regional and global public good. The increasingly global effects of crime and conflict require an equally global response to violence

The International Comparison Program (ICP) is a worldwide statistical initiative led by the World Bank under the auspices of the United Nations Statistical Commission. It produces comparable price and volume measures of gross domestic product (GDP) and its expenditure aggregates across economies. Through a partnership with international, regional, sub-regional and national agencies, the ICP collects price data and GDP expenditures to estimate purchasing power parities (PPPs) for the world's economies. The report provides ICP results for the benchmark year 2017 and revised results for earlier years. ICP data are used for socio-economic analyses by researchers, academics, policy makers at the national and international levels, and by organizations such as the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the United Nations, and the World Bank. Notably, PPPs and ICP data are used in indicators monitoring progress towards eight goals of the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the World Bank's international poverty lines, and the construction of the Human Development Index by the United Nations, among others. The use of PPPs continues to grow and the ICP website (icp.worldbank.org) lists many applications of the data by the development community, academia, media and others.

This book begins with an extensive descriptive account of villagers' dealings in the markets for labor, tenancies, credit, and crops, drawing on interviews and household surveys from the early 1980s. The book subsequently analyzes various alternative contractual arrangements and villagers' choices among them.

The book details the steps taken by 11 countries across Eastern Europe and Central Asia to strengthen their HIV programs based on the findings, and highlights critical issues for the road ahead.

The fourth edition of IFC's Food Safety Handbook is a step-by-step guide to help food sector businesses large or small establish or improve food safety systems. Written in easy-to-follow English and supplemented with useful tools for food safety management system implementation.

This publication provides a comprehensive overview of topics focusing on assessment, analysis, and management of financial risks in banking. It emphasizes risk management principles and stresses that key players in the corporate governance process are accountable for managing the different dimensions of financial and other risks. This fourth edition remains faithful to the objectives of the original publication. The new business aspects affecting banking risks, such as mobile banking, and regulatory changes over the past decade-specifically those related to Basel III capital adequacy concepts-have been included, as have new operational risk management topics, such as cybercrime, money laundering, and outsourcing. This publication will be of interest to a wide body of users of bank financial data. The target audience includes the persons responsible for the analysis of banks and for the senior management or organizations directing their efforts. Because the publication provides an overview of the spectrum of corporate governance and risk management, it is not aimed at technical specialists of any particular risk management area.

Policy makers in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) often complain that poor fiscal performance in their countries is a result of a high degree of spending rigidity. Despite being a common complaint, the issue has remained largely ignored by the literature because of the lack of adequate measures of rigidity that allow cross-country and time series comparability. This report helps close this gap by introducing a new measure of spending rigidities that can be easily applied to multiple countries. It focuses on the categories of spending that are naturally inflexible--wages, pensions, transfers to subnational governments, and debt service--and separates them into two components: structural and nonstructural. The structural component is determined by economic, demographic, and institutional fundamentals. The nonstructural component is determined by short-run transitory factors associated with business and political cycles. The degree of rigidity of spending is then proxied by the ratio of structural spending to total spending, with a higher value indicating that spending is driven mostly by factors out of the policy makers' control. This concept of rigidity was applied to 120 countries for the years 2000+"17 and produced several interesting results: - Advanced economies and developing countries in other regions have higher levels of rigidity than countries in LAC. - The sources of rigidity vary by country. - Higher rigidity is associated with higher spending levels, higher tax rates, higher public debt, and lower efficiency of public spending. - Rigidity has pervasive effects on fiscal sustainability, increasing the country's financing needs and reducing the probability of the country starting a fiscal adjustment. Given these pervasive effects of spending rigidity, the report concludes by discussing several policies to contain the sources of rigidity in the long term, ranging from the importance of deepening the pension reform process to the need of establishing strong fiscal institutions promoting medium-term fiscal planning.

Learning outcomes in Lebanon have been lower than the international average and with a declining trend since 2007. This volume uses a political economy approach and a system-level analysis to uncover why the education system in Lebanon is not reaching its full potential.

This guide aims to convey country experiences and good international practices as a basis for decisions on how to address country-specific public investment management reform agendas.

How can countries make sustainable gains in student learning at scale? This is a pressing question for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) – and the developing world more broadly – as countries seek to build human capital to drive sustainable growth. Significant progress in access has expanded coverage such that nearly all children in the region attend primary school, but many do not gain basic skills and drop out before completing secondary school, in part due to low-quality service delivery. The preponderance of evidence shows that it is learning – and not schooling in and of itself – that contributes to individual earnings, economic growth, and reduced inequality. For LAC in particular, low levels of human capital are a critical factor in explaining the region's relatively weak growth performance over the last half century. The easily measurable inputs are well-known, and the end goal is relatively clear, but raising student achievement at scale remains a challenge. Why? We propose that part of the answer lies in management – the processes and practices that guide how inputs into the education system are translated into outputs, and ultimately outcomes. While management (and related concepts, such as institutions, governance, or leadership) is often mentioned as an important factor in education policy discussions, relatively little quantitative research has been done to define and measure it. And even less has been done to unpack how and how much management matters for education quality. In this study, we begin filling these gaps, with new conceptual and empirical contributions that can be synthesized in four key messages: (1) Student learning is unlikely to improve at scale without better management. (2) Management affects how well every level of an education system functions, from individual schools to central technical units, and how well they work together. (3) Management quality can be measured and should be measured as a catalyst for improvement. (4) Several pathways to strengthening management are open to LAC countries now, with the potential for significant results. The study elaborates on each of these messages, synthesizing recent data and research and presenting the results of six new papers written to inform this report. The target audience for the Executive Summary is policymakers across LAC (and beyond) who are seeking approaches to strengthening their systems at scale. The target audience for the study overall includes the researchers and technical advisors who work on topics related to education management in development organizations, governments, think tanks, and other institutions across LAC

The economic impact of COVID-19 is unprecedented in size and scope. It has quickly evolved from a health emergency into an employment crisis. It also has far-reaching implications for workers beyond the immediate employment effects, as it most likely has accelerated the transformation process of jobs that had already started in the region and the world. This book focuses on three important pre-pandemic trends observed in the region-namely, premature deindustrialization, servicification of the economy, and task automation-that were significantly changing the labor market landscape in the region and that have been accelerated by the crisis. While there is still uncertainty about the economic impacts of Covid-19, policymakers need to start planning for a rapidly evolving future that will come sooner than expected. A strong focus on productivity, technology development and adoption, and training in relevant skills will be key to adapting and taking advantage of the new opportunities in the post-pandemic world. Importantly, the accelerated transformation of jobs calls for a rethinking of labor regulations and social protection policies geared towards wage earners employed in the formal sector of the economy. The three trends identified in Going Viral, the effects of the pandemic itself, and the growing reliance on electronic platforms raise doubts that wage employment will increase substantially in the coming years. At the same time, earnings and transactions processed through electronic platforms are more visible to the authorities, bringing an opportunity to increase tax revenue and social security contributions. The flexible regulation of the emerging forms of work in a way that encourages employment, supports formalization, and expands the coverage of social protection to larger segments of the population will be of utmost importance for policymakers preparing for a new and changed world.

Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report. Published semiannually, the report includes analysis of topical policy challenges faced by developing countries through in-depth research in the January edition, and shorter analytical pieces in the June edition.

Policymakers across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have long tried to integrate their people spatially and economically. Wishing to bring communities together and narrow economic gaps, governments have made large capital investments in transport corridors and "new cities." Hoping to provide jobs in places with little economic activity, governments have designated new industrial zones supported by spatially targeted business incentives. Yet the results of these place-based initiatives in MENA are limited. The disparities between capital cities and lagging areas, and between richer and poorer quarters of cities, remain stark. Across much of the region, a fortunate few are connected to opportunity, while many more people are marginal to the formal economy--or live outside it, seemingly forgotten. Why have place-based spatial initiatives in MENA countries largely underdelivered not yielding more sustainable jobs and growth? While the challenges are many and vary across the region, this report explains that many of these place-based policies get one thing wrong: they attempt to treat inequity's spatial and physical symptoms, not its causes. This report presents the five roots of spatial inequity in institutional inefficiencies across MENA--urban regulatory frictions, credentialist education systems, centralized control over local public services, barriers to the spatial mobility of goods and people, and barriers to market entry and lop-sided business environments - within cities, within countries, and across national borders. It proposes five transitional steps toward enabling convergence informed by economic geography.

Technological revolutions have increased the world's wealth unevenly and in ways that have accelerated climate change. This report argues that achieving The Paris Agreement's objectives would require a massive transfer of existing and commercially proven low-carbon technologies (LCT) from high-income to developing countries where the bulk of future emissions is expected to occur. This mass deployment is not only a necessity but also an opportunity: Policies to deploy LCT can help countries achieve economic and other development objectives, like improving human health, in addition to reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs). Additionally, LCT deployment offers an opportunity for countries with sufficient capabilities to benefit from participation in global value chains and produce and export LCTs. Finally, the report calls for a greater international involvement in supporting the poorest countries, which have the least access to LCT and finance and the most underdeveloped physical, technological, and institutional capabilities that are essential to benefit from technology.

This book identifies effective strategies to plan, create and manage government and privately-owned public urban spaces, and explores the broad spectrum of ways to govern public spaces and how they can be financially sustainable assets. The book consists of three Parts. Part I explores the different degrees of "publicness" of public spaces and frames the delivery of well-designed and managed public spaces in cities through better asset lifecycle management. Part II examines the quality and spatial patterns of how public spaces are planned and distributed across selected cities. Part III focuses on how different types of public spaces are planned, designed, funded, implemented, and managed, drawing upon a series of city case studies.

Obesity is a global ticking time-bomb with huge potential negative economic and health impacts, especially for the poor. Countries and global partners need to act urgently to address this ensuing epidemic with emphasis highlighting interventions that require corrective public action rather than one of individual responsibility.

This book is the first stocktaking of what the decarbonization of the world economy means for fossil fuel-dependent countries. These countries are the most exposed to the impacts of global climate policies and, at the same time, are often unprepared to manage them. They depend on the export of oil, gas, or coal; the use of carbon-intensive infrastructure (for example, refineries, petrochemicals, and coal power plants); or both. Fossil fuel-dependent countries face financial, fiscal, and macro-structural risks from the transition of the global economy away from carbon-intensive fuels and the value chains based on them. This book focuses on managing these transition risks and harnessing related opportunities. Diversification and Cooperation in a Decarbonizing World identifies multiple strategies that fossil fuel-dependent countries can pursue to navigate the turbulent waters of a low-carbon transition. The policy and investment choices to be made in the next decade will determine these countries' degree of exposure and overall resilience. Abandoning their comfort zones and developing completely new skills and capabilities in a time frame consistent with the Paris Agreement on climate change is a daunting challenge and requires long-term revenue visibility and consistent policy leadership. This book proposes a constructive framework for climate strategies for fossil fuel-dependent countries based on new approaches to diversification and international climate cooperation. Climate policy leaders share responsibility for creating room for all countries to contribute to the goals of the Paris Agreement, taking into account the specific vulnerabilities and opportunities each country faces.

This report is intended to provide conceptual and empirical learnings to help support the ongoing implementation of a continent-wide 'Digital Transformation for Africa' initiative that will span the next decade to 2030.

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered the most pronounced setback in the fight against global poverty since World War II.This report provides new data on the stark reversal of progress in the fight against global poverty. It explores how to optimize fiscal policy and identifies policies that can help correct course.

The book examines how to increase synergies between socioeconomic development goals, climate change policies, and digital technologies, offering guidance on how government institutions and private organizations in the digital field can catalyze green digitalization.

Countries in East Asia and the Pacific were already experiencing a learning crisis when the COVID-19 pandemic made things worse. This report examines key factors affecting learning outcomes in the region, including teaching, the use of educational technologies (EdTech), and public spending on education.

Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report. Published semiannually, the report includes analysis of topical policy challenges faced by developing countries through in-depth research in the January edition, and shorter analytical pieces in the June edition.