Economics & Development

The objective of the Additional Financing of the Resilience, Inclusion, Skills, and Equity Project is to increase (i) foundational learning of early-grade students; (ii) access to job-relevant training for youth; and (iii) access to adaptive safety nets and income-generating opportunities, including for the poor and vulnerable, in The Gambia. The AF will scale up and introduce new activities under component 3: expand and enhance social safety nets. Specifically, the AF will expand activities to operationalize a national DRF system linked to ASP through a new subcomponent 3.4: strengthening Disaster Risk Financing and Adaptive Social Protection. The parent project will also be restructured to (a) revise the Project Development Objective (PDO) to reflect the expanded scope, with PDO part (iii) revised to read access to adaptive safety nets and income-generating opportunities, including for the poor and vulnerable, in The Gambia; (b) update the results framework, including elevating a new PDO-level indicator (Share of shock transfer beneficiaries receiving the first transfer within 60 days of official trigger activation) to capture the adaptive dimension introduced by the AF; and (c) revise disbursement estimates and the implementation schedule to reflect the expanded scope. No changes are proposed to other components of the parent project.

This progress report is for the years 2022 to 2023 and summarizes the technical assistance (TA) provided to the Pacific Island Countries (PICs) under the Pacific Health, Nutrition, and Population Programmatic ASA (ID: P178941; hereafter referred to as PASA), specifically as related to inputs provided to Public Expenditure Reviews (PER). As part of agreed deliverables under the approved PASA concept note 2022-2026, the WB Pacific Health Team contributed health chapters to the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Nine Pacific Island Countries (PIC9) PER. The chapters were not published separately for the health sector, but the Pacific Health Team disseminated the findings with health stakeholders, both in country and in regional forums such as the Pacific heads of Health Meetings. The findings are also being used to support Ministries of Health prepare and submit annual plans and budget for submission to the Ministries of Finance.