Economics & Development

This Digital Entrepreneurship for Vulnerable Urban Youth (DEVY) Project aims to generate insights to inform government efforts to address youth employment challenges. For this project, digital entrepreneurship is defined as a business development activity that leverages digital tools and platforms to deliver digitally enabled services. Examples include, but are not limited to, digital job matching and job search or counseling platforms, digital or artificial intelligence (AI)-powered mentoring and advisory tools, business plan generators, and digital payment and marketing solutions. It targets vulnerable youth in Kigali, primarily ages 18–34 and aims to provide training to strengthen foundational employability. Foundational employability refers to the essential, transferable skills and competencies that enable individuals to successfully enter and sustain participation in the labor market, regardless of specific occupation or sector. This can be enhanced by development of digital literacy and socioemotional skills (communication, teamwork, self-management, adaptability, resilience, and professional conduct). By strengthening foundational skills, combined with entrepreneurship support, the project to accelerate transitions into wage and self-employment. The operation aligns with the country’s National Strategy for Transformation Phase 2 (NST2), the National Employment and Skills Strategy and Youth Employment Strategy, and the Digital Transformation Agenda, advancing Rwanda’s goals to harness the demographic dividend, reduce urban poverty, and foster social cohesion.

The Selected Economic Indicators section provides a concise snapshot of Niger’s macroeconomic context underpinning the Country Partnership Framework (FY26–FY31). It highlights key trends in growth, public finances, external balances, and social outcomes, reflecting the economy’s vulnerability to climate shocks, security risks, and external financing conditions. The indicators illustrate Niger’s dependence on agriculture and extractives, limited fiscal space, low domestic revenue mobilization, and high poverty levels, alongside pressures from rapid population growth. This macroeconomic overview serves as an analytical baseline for the CPF, informing policy dialogue, risk assessment, and the design of interventions aimed at strengthening resilience, supporting job creation, and promoting inclusive and sustainable growth.

The objective of the Digital Entrepreneurship for Vulnerable Urban Youth Project for Rwanda is ​to enhance labor market readiness and entrepreneurial outcomes of vulnerable youth in Kigali This Digital Entrepreneurship for Vulnerable Urban Youth (DEVY) Project aims to generate insights to inform government efforts to address youth employment challenges. For this project, digital entrepreneurship is defined as a business development activity that leverages digital tools and platforms to deliver digitally enabled services. Examples include, but are not limited to, digital job matching and job search or counseling platforms, digital or artificial intelligence (AI)-powered mentoring and advisory tools, business plan generators, and digital payment and marketing solutions. It targets vulnerable youth in Kigali, primarily ages 18–34 and aims to provide training to strengthen foundational employability. Foundational employability refers to the essential, transferable skills and competencies that enable individuals to successfully enter and sustain participation in the labor market, regardless of specific occupation or sector. This can be enhanced by development of digital literacy and socioemotional skills (communication, teamwork, self-management, adaptability, resilience, and professional conduct). By strengthening foundational skills, combined with entrepreneurship support, the project to accelerate transitions into wage and self-employment. The operation aligns with the country’s National Strategy for Transformation Phase 2 (NST2), the National Employment and Skills Strategy and Youth Employment Strategy, and the Digital Transformation Agenda, advancing Rwanda’s goals to harness the demographic dividend, reduce urban poverty, and foster social cohesion.

Climate-related and other natural disasters, such as droughts and floods, have a significant impact on agricultural producers and pose substantial risks and costs to agricultural lenders. This study aims to assess how FIs with a sizable agricultural loan portfolio manage credit risk arising from natural disasters. It addresses lending to small-scale and medium-size commercial and semicommercial primary producers (farmers who sell part of their produce for income), not subsistence farmers. This focus reflects how financial institutions typically prioritize market oriented farmers for sustainable agricultural credit. Despite substantial evidence of the impact of disasters, there is limited information about the nature and effectiveness of measures undertaken by FIs to deal with the consequences. Nor is much known about how regulators and supervisors perceive such events, or if they consider it necessary to provide regulatory or supervisory relief (as they did in the case of the COVID-19 pandemic). Thus the study also assesses how regulators and supervisors perceive the credit risks arising from natural disasters. Based on these assessments, the study develops recommendations for measures to help FIs better prepare for and manage the consequences of disaster events affecting agricultural loan portfolios. This study confirms that disaster events often lead to significant loan defaults and write-offs across different categories of lenders. Disaster events in this study generally refer to devastating natural occurrences that lead to substantial economic losses and disruptions of economic activities. Specifically, for purposes of rationalization across different sizes of lenders, a disaster is a natural event that leads to a notable increase in non-repayments (loans past due by one day or more, or PAR1+) in agriculture loans.