Economics & Development

Brazilian States and Municipalities Digital Acceleration Project for Brazil has the development objectives to expand financing to increase access to and inclusive use of broadband internet and digital government services in underserved states and municipalities. Component 1: Strengthening the Borrower’s and Eligible Beneficiaries Capacity to Implement Digital Transformation supports advisory and implementation capabilities to ensure a sustainable digital transformation pipeline and effective project delivery. Sub-components: Sub-component 1.1 provides technical assistance to Caixa Economica Federal (CEF) to build internal expertise in structuring digital projects, including support for public-private partnerships (PPPs), service design lab functions to co-create digital solutions with municipalities, mechanisms to aggregate demand and standardize procurements, and the development and application of environmental and social guidelines with climate resilience criteria. Sub-component 1.2 provides technical assistance to eligible state and municipal borrowers to diagnose needs, prepare digital strategies and sub-projects, implement solutions, engage in peer-to-peer learning, and apply CEF’s environmental and social guidelines to integrate sustainability and climate risk management into each sub-project. Component 2: Financing Sub-projects provides financial intermediation through CEF for demand-driven sub-projects aligned with the National Digital Government Strategy, focusing on market-failure contexts and on municipalities and states with minimum digital maturity and creditworthiness. Sub-components: Sub-component 2.1 finances digital infrastructure to bridge first- and middle-mile gaps, modernize networks, and build climate-resilient, energy-efficient data infrastructure and cloud solutions, including technical studies that define adaptation and mitigation standards embedded in municipal evaluation and CEF sustainability practices. Sub-component 2.2 finances digital public services by expanding one-stop portals, adopting digital public infrastructure (DPI) such as secure digital identity and data exchange platforms, strengthening cybersecurity and data protection, fostering a GovTech ecosystem and PPPs, and enhancing climate resilience of services through interoperable platforms that support alerts and continuity of operations during extreme weather events. Sub-component 2.3 finances digital skills through training programs for citizens, public servants, and businesses that address basic to advanced competencies, include targeted initiatives to reduce the gender gap in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), incorporate modules on technology-facilitated gender-based violence prevention and response, and establish climate-resilient public spaces for inclusive learning to sustain the use of digitally enabled services.

Childcare supports human capital development, economic growth, employment, and gender equality, yet access to affordable and convenient services remains limited in many countries. Governments often hold an underused asset that can help address these gaps: public land and buildings. When planned and allocated strategically, these assets can reduce costs, improve location, and expand childcare services where families need them most. This brief highlights how public land strategies can support childcare expansion and identifies practical opportunities for policymakers, local governments, development partners, and practitioners working across childcare and land management domains. The brief summarizes insights from the Policy Report From Plots to Playrooms: Public Land Strategies for Affordable and Accessible Childcare (Amoils, Buchhave, Stanley 2025). The report combines a review of global literature, multiple country examples, and practical implementation tools to examine how public land and building assets can be used to expand access to childcare. It includes two in-depth country case studies, Tanzania and Indonesia, that illustrate challenges and policy options for leveraging public land to support childcare provision.

The Entrepreneurship Database is a unique global source of cross-country data on the entry and exit of formal private enterprises. First published in 2011, it compiles administrative information from business registries worldwide and has been updated every two years since. The Entrepreneurship Database grew in scope to cover more data points and more economies over time. The 8th edition of the Entrepreneurship Database contains aggregate annual data over the period of 2006-2024 and sex disaggregated data over the period 2014-2024. The 8th edition covers 188 economies, out of which 117 provide sex disaggregated data. The Entrepreneurship Database has adopted a data collection methodology that seeks to provide a structured view of entrepreneurial activity. To facilitate cross-country comparability, the Entrepreneurship Database employs consistent units of measurement, sources of information, and concept of entrepreneurship that is applicable and available across the diverse sample of participating economies. It assembles a comparable global dataset that allows analysis of entrepreneurial trends across countries and time.

This paper examines the effects of drought shocks on unintended pregnancies across 18 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The results show that drought exposure increases the likelihood of unintended pregnancy by one to two percentage points (about 3 to 6 percent), depending on the specification. The analysis further finds that children born from unintended pregnancies are less likely to receive antenatal care, less likely to be delivered in health facilities, and more vulnerable to illness. The findings also show that unintended pregnancies have implications for women’s labor market outcomes. Overall, the findings indicate that drought shocks intensify women’s economic and reproductive vulnerabilities. Given the wide-ranging consequences of unintended births for both mothers and children, the results high-light the importance of integrating reproductive health interventions into climate adaptation policies.