Economics & Development

This report presents the findings of a mixed-methods assessment of the challenges and opportunities facing men, women, and children with disabilities in Malawi. It examines barriers to accessing healthcare, education, employment, and social protection services, as well as institutional and sectoral constraints affecting the implementation of disability-inclusive policies. The assessment highlights that persons with disabilities experience lower educational attainment, limited employment opportunities, poorer health outcomes, and higher levels of poverty. It also provides recommendations to strengthen disability inclusion through increased legal rights awareness, integration of disability considerations into education and training, capacity building for government institutions and organizations of persons with disabilities, harmonization of disability data systems, updates to national action plans, and improved access to inclusive education. The assessment was conducted by the World Bank in collaboration with the Ministry of Gender, Community Development & Social Welfare of Malawi.

Morocco has strengthened macroeconomic resilience and expanded infrastructure and social services over two decades, but faces slow private sector job creation, high youth unemployment, low female labor force participation, persistent territorial disparities, growing water scarcity from recurrent droughts, and human capital gaps that constrain productivity and inclusion. In the coming years, the World Bank Group will focus on creating more and better jobs by supporting a shift to a productivity-driven, private sector-led growth model that strengthens competition, improves the regulatory environment, levels the playing field with state-owned enterprises, and streamlines procedures and dispute resolution while deepening public-private dialogue in priority sectors. The program will expand access to finance for small and medium enterprises and women-owned businesses and pair financing with managerial, technological, and market development support, while mobilizing International Finance Corporation and Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency instruments to crowd in private capital, de-risk projects, and promote private participation, including public-private partnerships, in energy, renewable energy, infrastructure, healthcare, agribusiness, tourism, and manufacturing, alongside corporate governance improvements and digital transformation. To advance inclusive, connected, and resilient territories, support will improve connectivity to markets, expand access to quality services, and strengthen resilience to climate and economic shocks through investments in water resource management, climate-smart agriculture, green and resilient infrastructure including coastal resilience, desalination, and regional logistics, and adaptive social protection, complemented by stronger subnational governance, urban planning, municipal service delivery, and competitive secondary cities, with efforts to leverage local economic ecosystems and actors in the social and solidarity economy and to deepen capital markets and innovative financing for territorial investments. To strengthen human capital, the program will sustain education reforms by reinforcing early childhood development, foundational learning, and competency-based curricula; upgrade technical and vocational education and training aligned with labor market demand, including digital and green skills; and improve health system efficiency and primary and community care to advance universal health coverage, elevate nutrition and prevention of noncommunicable diseases, and develop long-term care as both a health and jobs strategy, while promoting private provision and innovation such as pharmaceutical manufacturing and digital education and health solutions. Across all areas, the approach will reinforce institutions, governance, data systems, and coordination and apply adaptive, evidence-based implementation to translate reforms into results.