Economics & Development

Human capital- people’s knowledge, skills, and health- drives productivity and growth. The Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) measures the human capital a child born today can expect to accumulate over their working life, extending the original HCI by incorporating tertiary education and work experience. This brief summarizes Turkmenistan’s HCI+ score and its performance in building human capital

Human capital - people’s knowledge, skills, and health - drives productivity and growth. The Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) measures the human capital a child born today can expect to accumulate over their working life, extending the original HCI by incorporating tertiary education and work experience. This brief summarizes Cote d’Ivoire’s HCI+ score and its performance in building human capital.

Human capital - people’s knowledge, skills, and health - drives productivity and growth. The Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) measures the human capital a child born today can expect to accumulate over their working life, extending the original HCI by incorporating tertiary education and work experience. This brief summarizes Central African Republic’s HCI+ score and its performance in building human capital.

Human capital - people’s knowledge, skills, and health - drives productivity and growth. The Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) measures the human capital a child born today can expect to accumulate over their working life, extending the original HCI by incorporating tertiary education and work experience. This brief summarizes Pakistan's HCI+ score and its performance in building human capital.

Human capital - people’s knowledge, skills, and health - drives productivity and growth. The Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) measures the human capital a child born today can expect to accumulate over their working life, extending the original HCI by incorporating tertiary education and work experience. This brief summarizes Algeria's HCI+ score and its performance in building human capital.

Human capital - people’s knowledge, skills, and health - drives productivity and growth. The Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) measures the human capital a child born today can expect to accumulate over their working life, extending the original HCI by incorporating tertiary education and work experience. This brief summarizes Thailand's HCI+ score and its performance in building human capital.

Human capital - people’s knowledge, skills, and health - drives productivity and growth. The Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) measures the human capital a child born today can expect to accumulate over their working life, extending the original HCI by incorporating tertiary education and work experience. This brief summarizes Myanmar's HCI+ score and its performance in building human capital.

Human capital- people’s knowledge, skills, and health- drives productivity and growth. The Human Capital Index Plus (HCI+) measures the human capital a child born today can expect to accumulate over their working life, extending the original HCI by incorporating tertiary education and work experience. This brief summarizes Switzerland’s HCI+ score and its performance in building human capital

Accelerating Sustainable and Clean Energy Access Transformation in Lesotho for Lesotho has the development objective to increase energy access in Lesotho. Components: Component 1: Increasing Access to On-Grid Electrification, which finances least-cost grid extension and densification to peri-urban, rural, and highland villages identified by the National Electrification Strategy, installation of medium- and low-voltage lines, transformers, service drops, and prepaid meters, last-mile connection support including ready boards for households without internal wiring, reinforcement of distribution assets to improve reliability and climate resilience, and engagement of an owner’s engineer to review designs, support procurement, and supervise works; Sub-components include grid expansion works, last-mile connection facilitation, network reinforcement, and owner’s engineer services. Component 2: Off-Grid Energy Access Pilot, which provides performance-based grants and catalytic grants to qualified off-grid solar providers to deliver verified, quality-assured solar solutions for households, small and medium-sized enterprises, public facilities, and climate-affected herders and farmers in areas beyond economic grid reach, incorporates gender-responsive affordability measures for lower-income female-headed households, and establishes operating guidelines, an independent verification agent, and a digital monitoring, reporting, and verification (dMRV) platform integrated with regional architecture to enable results tracking and potential access to carbon finance; Sub-components include performance-based grants, catalytic market development grants, program design and operating guidelines, dMRV deployment, and independent verification. Component 3: Technical Assistance and Project Management, which supports sector governance and planning including annual updates of the National Electrification Strategy, development of a National Clean Cooking and Space Heating Strategy and Action Plan with integrated gender analysis, utility performance strengthening through implementation of a Performance Improvement Plan and preparation of a Transmission and Distribution Master Plan, capacity building for project institutions, consumer education and communication, gender and citizen engagement activities, and systems for safe end-of-life handling and disposal of solar products, alongside strengthening of the project implementation unit; Sub-components include sector planning and policy support, clean cooking and space heating strategy, utility performance and network planning, institutional capacity building and communications, gender and citizen engagement, e-waste management, and project implementation support. Component 4: Contingent Emergency Response, a zero-allocation mechanism to enable rapid financing of eligible response, recovery, and reconstruction activities in the event of an eligible crisis or emergency.

Ratings of the Beirut Housing Rehabilitation and Cultural and Creative Industries Recovery for Lebanon were as follows: outcome was moderately satisfactory, Bank performance was moderately satisfactory, and M&E quality was substantial. Key lessons and recommendations are as follows: (1) Heritage rehabilitation in post-crisis settings faces high and uncertain costs due to hidden structural damage, macroeconomic volatility, and supply disruptions, requiring comparators from similar crisis contexts, deep country calibration, and substantially larger contingencies at appraisal. (2) Targeting “historical housing for the most vulnerable” creates inherent tension because heritage assets are often owned by higher-income households; projects should explicitly address this by embedding affordability instruments such as transparent building-prioritization and below-market-rate (BMR) rental frameworks and binding Deeds of Commitment. (3) Legal and social facilitation is a critical-path activity in heritage residential buildings; dedicated legal and social specialists should be mobilized from effectiveness, with realistic timelines for due diligence, socio-economic and legal (SEL) screening, negotiations, and standardized agreements (consent forms, Deeds of Commitment, tenancy and occupancy templates, and no-objection forms). (4) Emergency cultural grants can deliver rapid and cost-effective results in fragile contexts, but to support sustainable recovery they should be coupled with medium-term assistance, including entrepreneurial capacity building, mentorship, and market linkage support so that one-off grants become a bridge to viable cultural enterprises. (5) Integrating physical reconstruction with targeted support for the cultural and creative industries (CCI) enhances holistic recovery by simultaneously restoring the built environment and revitalizing social and cultural life; future operations in historic urban areas should pair housing rehabilitation with CCI emergency support to reinforce social cohesion and neighborhood reactivation. (6) When using United Nations agencies in emergency operations, procurement arrangements must be assessed and aligned at appraisal with the urgency of delivery, considering fit-for-purpose processes, potential delegation to country-level procurement where feasible, and early milestones and coordination mechanisms to preempt delays. (7) Urban heritage recovery requires more granular monitoring to capture broader economic and social benefits; future designs should include simple indicators for economic activity in rehabilitated buildings, employment sustained beyond construction, revenue from cultural productions, and neighborhood spillovers to better demonstrate results and inform municipal and donor decision-making.