Economics & Development

As the impacts of climate change grow ever more pronounced, countries are under increasing pressure to pursue low carbon growth paths. The Gambia’s second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), submitted under the Paris Agreement, set an ambitious target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Agriculture remains the backbone of The Gambia’s economy, and agro-processing is central to value addition and job creation. Meanwhile, modernizing solid waste management systems is both a developmental challenge and an investment opportunity for The Gambia, particularly as urbanization accelerates. The objective of this diagnostic is to assess the quality and effectiveness of The Gambia’s business regulatory and policy environment in promoting sustainable development and private investment - both economy-wide and in three key sub-sectors: agro-processing, hotels and accommodation, and urban solid waste management (USWM). The analysis applies the World Bank’s Green Investment Climate Diagnostic (GICD) tool and draws on desk research and stakeholder consultations conducted between May and August 2025. It identifies sector-specific and cross-cutting challenges, opportunities, and preliminary recommendations to inform evidence-based reforms and targeted support. The rest of the report is organized as follows: section 1 presents introduction and current situation. Section 2 provides an overview of the GICD methodology. Section 3 analyses the economy-wide constraints to climate friendly investment. Sections 4 to 6 analyze the three identified subsectors and discussed sector-specific regulatory and institutional challenges to climate friendly investment in those sectors. Section 7 presents recommendations to unlock regulatory constraints to promote private investment in the three selected subsectors.

This validation of the World Bank Group’s (WBG) Completion and Learning Review (CLR) covers the period of the Country Partnership Framework (CPF) for the fiscal years (FY) 2020-25, and the adjustments that were made through the Performance and Learning Review (PLR) of July 2023. The CPF was well aligned with the government’s Strategic Development Plan 2025 and the Kazakhstan 2050 Strategy, and addressed the key constraints identified in the 2018 Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD). The CPF program was structured around three focus areas, Promoting Inclusive Growth (Focus Area 1), Strengthening Human Capital (Focus Area 2) and Sustainable, Resilient, and Low-Carbon Growth (Focus Area 3), and a cross-cutting theme on governance and institutions. It addressed corporate priorities on climate change, jobs, and economic transformation. Climate change was covered under Focus Area 1 and Focus Area 3. Jobs and economic transformation were covered under Focus Areas 1 and 3. The CPF incorporated gender equity considerations, namely through the 2024 Gender Assessment and one indicator under Focus Area 1. Due to Kazakhstan’s Upper Middle-Income Country status, the CPF was mostly anchored in knowledge and advisory services, notably the Joint Economic Research Program (JERP) an explicitly co-funded, cost-sharing arrangement between the World Bank and the government of Kazakhstan.