On July 1, 2020, Mauritius officially joined the ranks of High-Income Countries (HIC). It is a cruel historical irony that Mauritius reached the High-Income milestone during one of the worst years in its history. Mauritius delivered a highly successful health response to the global Covid-19...

Somalia has a triple challenge of low levels of labor force participation, low productivity, and high levels of poverty. Economic growth in Somalia has been low, subject to shocks; and thus, insufficient for job creation. Shocks to the economy have contributed to forced displacement, a dominance...

From 1999 to 2011 Sudan had a period where it benefited from extensive discoveries of natural wealth through oil. But the oil economy had also clear symptoms of Dutch disease. Agriculture suffered from neglect, and there were urgent calls to invest natural resource rents into economic...

Nigeria has vast potential, but development has stagnated over the past decade. The country is characterized by strong spatial inequalities and a large north-south divide. Creating better jobs is a necessary condition for accelerating poverty reduction and economic transformation. A combination...

South Sudan is at a crossroads in its recovery, reconstruction, and development. Having gained independence in 2011 after two protracted civil wars, the country twice relapsed into conflict: first in 2013 and again in 2016. While the economy began to recover following the 2018 peace deal,...

Mozambique has experienced rapid growth for over two decades. Growth accelerated remarkably following the end of the civil war, averaging 7.9 percent over 1993-2015, among the highest in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, growth decelerated sharply following the hidden debt crisis in 2016, which...

Timor-Leste has made important development gains since independence in 2002 but is now at a critical juncture. The government has successfully rebuilt public infrastructure, reduced poverty, and quickly built from scratch a network of functional public institutions. Despite these achievements,...