Pashtuna, a poultry farmer and beneficiary of the National Horticulture and Livestock Project. Credit: Izabela Leao / World Bank “I was a completely broken person before, a person who was not able to confront the hardship of life,” says Pashtuna, a 32-year-old poultry farmer who lives in the Herat province with her husband and five children. A beneficiary of ...
SHG meeting of people with mental illness and caregivers. (Photo: TNMHP) Thirty-year old Vijaya (name changed) spent 10 years of her life not talking to anybody. Her parents were daily wage laborers, scraping together a sparse living in India’s southern state of Tamil Nadu. Unaware of any treatment, and afraid of being stigmatized or shunned by their community, they ...
Shortly after the Soviet invasion in 1979, the World Bank suspended its operations in Afghanistan. Work resumed in May 2002 to help meet the immediate needs of the poorest people and assist the government in building strong and accountable institutions to deliver services to its citizens. As we mark the reopening of the World Bank office in Kabul 15 ...
In a previous blog we related how South Asia as a whole had improved the performance of its container ports since 2000 but had still struggled to catch up with other developed and developing regions. But within that picture, some ports did better than others. For example, Colombo in Sri Lanka, the fast-expanding Mundra and Jawaharlal Nehru Port in ...
With nearly 6.4 million girls in secondary school in 2015, Bangladesh is among the few countries to achieve gender parity in school enrollment, and have more girls than boys in the secondary schools. Photo Credit: Shilpa Banerji/World Bank Going through the narrow streets of Savar, you are surrounded by homes and shops on both sides - doors opening for ...
The first day of the Digital Youth Summit in Peshawar saw corridors and rooms crowded with entrepreneurs and digital gurus from across the world looking to map out Pakistan’s digital future. These young and enthusiastic innovators are helping to redefine the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) as an emerging technology hub, and providing substantive skills and resources for Pakistan’s ...
Helping Afghanistan Become More Resilient to Natural Disasters This blog is part of a series highlighting the work of the Afghanistan Disaster Risk Management and Resilience Program During the almost 4 years I spent in the World Bank office in Kabul, I experienced frequent earthquake tremors and saw the results of the significant reduction in winter snow, which severely impacts ...
Every year, May 3rd is marked around the globe as World Press Freedom Day. This year UNESCO has declared the theme “Critical Minds for Critical Times”. Recently, Sri Lanka joined the ranks of nations that have taken progressive steps in making information available to the public by unveiling its own Right to Information (RTI) law. This is an important ...
On a visit to a vaccination program in Kalakan district in Kabul Province, I met many farmers who were happy and grateful that their animals were being vaccinated. Many Afghans today, including those in the villages, now understand that there are diseases that can pass from animals to humans and the best way to prevent it is to vaccinate the ...
Register for the Digital Youth Summit Here, don't miss out! Contrary to what many of my social media friends seem to think, I am a pretty private guy who rarely goes to attend events, and despite being pretty fine with speaking my heart out on the stage, I am a kind of a weird shy person otherwise. While I ...
Are South Asia’s Container Ports Competitive? Many countries, developed and developing, that want to become more competitive in global markets tend to jump to a quick conclusion that they need to invest more in infrastructure, particularly in transport sectors like ports. But while many regions, including South Asia, do face important infrastructure gaps, massive new investment is not the ...
“We want teachers to come to school and educate our children.” “When the Anganwadi worker doesn’t turn up for work, we don’t pay her salary.” “I have set up a grievance redressal mechanism to make public services accountable to villagers.” These were some of the statements made to us by Anita, a once-diffident village woman in rural Jharkhand. What ...
Cover of the upcoming report: Competitiveness of South Asia’s Container Ports : A Comprehensive Assessment of Performance, Drivers, and Costs The World Bank is releasing its first-ever comprehensive study of container ports in South Asia, examining the competitiveness of major ports across the region and suggesting ways they can work more efficiently to boost trade. The report, to be ...
Learn, register, and check out the schedule for the Digital Youth Summit. First, I’m just very excited to meet everyone there! I’m eager to learn and share. Second, Peshawar! The oldest city in Pakistan! So much history! Third, and most importantly, I’m looking forward to being part of a great movement. Let me explain. Private equity firm JAB just bought ...
For a considerable period of time, on the score of mobilizing infrastructure investments through private participation among developing countries, India ranked 1st in Energy and Transport sectors. In several economic infrastructure sectors, India enjoyed a strong track record of harnessing Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). Private sector investments in infrastructure more than tripled from the 10th Plan Period (2002-07; INR 2 ...
Reviving an institution to its past glory of being among the best in the country can be a tough task. But after fifteen years of administrative and educational reforms with financial help and guidance of the World Bank and the government, the 160-year-old College of Engineering Pune (COEP) has emerged among the top 25 in the country. The Ministry of ...
This year, perhaps even more than in previous years, I am very excited to come to DYS for two main reasons. First, since its inception in 2014, the Digital Youth Summit has become one of the premier technology conferences in Pakistan. Back in 2014, we got some skeptical responses to the idea of holding a tech conference in Peshawar. ...
A group of women in a Sri Lanka Estate. Credit: Joe Qian / World Bank Happy New Year to all our Sri Lankan friends and colleagues celebrating the Sinhala and Tamil New Year this month; and Happy Easter to those celebrating it. This is my first opportunity to celebrate these various holidays in my adopted country. I love the ...
Students in a classroom in Bamyan Province. Photo Credit: Taimani Films/ World Bank Afghanistan grapples with a range of challenges from growing insecurity to stagnating growth and rising levels of poverty. It is no surprise that the impact of the violent conflict on the country’s economic prospects and the welfare of its people is profound. Yet, Afghanistan carries ambitious ...
