Publications & Documents

This report explores how governments in Latin America and the Caribbean can use digital technology and data to foster responsiveness, resilience and proactiveness in the public sector. This report looks at governance frameworks, digital government capabilities, data-driven public sector, public service design and delivery, and digital innovation in the public sector. It identifies trends, challenges, strengths, and opportunities for cross-border collaboration and provides policy recommendations to achieve an efficient and sustainable digital transformation of governments across the region.

Africa is undergoing an unprecedented urban and climate transition; yet, given the right conditions, compact urban forms can encourage greater sustainability, resilience and liveability in the coming decades. Using novel techniques and newly available data, this report fills in existing data gaps by producing measures of compactness for 5 625 urban agglomerations, along with other urban form attributes. Even though urbanisation is often unplanned and uncoordinated, a promising trend has emerged: very large cities (of over 4 million inhabitants) are more compact, discounting the population effect, on average, than larger (1 million to 4 million inhabitants) and intermediate cities (50 000 to 1 million inhabitants). Moreover, less compact agglomerations tend to have smaller buildings, flat, low skylines, less complete centres (reflecting a less optimal use of space) and polycentric patterns (i.e. multiple centres, rather than a single, monocentric city). This report analyses the consequences of less compact agglomerations for sustainability and liveability. The disadvantages include higher energy demand, less accessibility to services and opportunities, less walkable urban landscapes and greater car dependency, in addition to higher outdoor air pollution. It also considers the potential trade-offs with resilience; for example, compactness can lead to a loss of green space and an increase of urban heat island effects. The report offers opportunities in the coming years to single out potential areas of action for resilience, as well as for monitoring and evaluating progress.

The Economic Outlook for Southeast Asia, China and India is a regular publication on regional economic growth and development in Emerging Asia. It focuses on the economic conditions of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member countries: Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam. It also addresses relevant economic issues in China and India to fully reflect developments in the region. This Update presents the region’s economic outlook, depicting rapidly changing trends and macroeconomic challenges amidst external headwinds.

This Policy Guidance is a product of the Development Assistance Committee’s multi-year programme of work on Illicit Financial Flows (IFFs) in oil commodity trading. It proposes a set of relevant, feasible actions for providers of official development assistance (ODA) to respond to IFFs in oil commodity trading. The aim is to enhance the mobilisation of domestic resources for the benefit of populations living in oil-producing developing countries, and enable integrity in their energy transition, particularly in carbon trade.

The 'Miracle on the River Han' catapulted Korea from developing country to a prosperous economy, driven in part by advancements in science, technology, and innovation. Being the second-highest R&D spender among OECD economies, Korea excels in key technologies, including semiconductors, 6G, and ICT infrastructure. Despite this remarkable progress, disparities remain between SMEs and chaebols, manufacturing and services, ICT and non-ICT industries, and urban and rural areas. Korea also grapples with societal and economic vulnerabilities, including an aging population, a significant carbon footprint, limited renewable energy use, and pronounced gender inequality. To further seize opportunities for equitable and inclusive growth, Korea must foster a shared national vision to develop science, technology, and innovation to address societal issues, enhance R&D policy implementation, promote excellent research, further internationalise, and broaden technology diffusion.

The Sahel and West Africa region is facing a serious food and nutrition security crisis with high rates of acute malnutrition, combined with high rates of malnourishment and over-nourishment – the 'triple burden of malnutrition'. Poor-quality diets are the root of all forms of malnutrition, as well as common non-communicable diseases, and are responsible for an estimated one in five adult deaths globally. The high cost of food is a key barrier to accessing a healthy diet. Even before the recent global inflation in food prices, West Africa’s food prices were 30%-40% higher than other regions in the world of comparable income levels. The paper analyses the costs of healthy diets in 17 countries in the Sahel and West Africa and which food groups drive up costs. The observed high cross-country variability in costs and cost composition points to a need for more targeted and nutrition-sensitive food system policies as well as the need to invest in better food price data and monitoring capacities.