The IMF’s April 2025 Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa presents a clear warning: regional growth is slowing, debt pressures are mounting, and donor assistance is declining. Yet the report outlines critical opportunities particularly in domestic revenue mobilization, structural reform, and private sector activation that can shape a more resilient …
Private sector investment is expected to play an important role in closing the current gap between available financing for adaptation and that which is required by developing countries. To date, however, the level of private sector financing in adaptation, particularly in developing countries, has been quite low. Innovative financial instruments …
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, health system disruptions, fear of becoming infected with COVID-19, mobility restrictions and lockdowns, and reduced household incomes likely contributed to households forgoing needed health care. Using repeated measures collected with a standardized instrument over two time periods in 25 countries and roughly …
Clean energy development for almost all G20 countries, be it developing or developed, stands at restricted levels for green hydrogen produced from biomass for heat and electricity. Therefore, a greater emphasis must be placed on deploying renewable energy sources and helping clean technologies businesses gain the wherewithal to avoid the …
Ever since its inception, the G20 Energy Transitions Working Group (ETWG) has covered a wide range of priority areas broadly spanning across clean energy, energy access and energy security. Specifically, with respect to clean energy technologies, while there exist some legacy topics such as energy efficiency, renewable energy, nuclear energy, …
The transition to electric mobility (E-Mobility) represents a complex and multifaceted challenge for power systems that will require a range of solutions and approaches to address. Much of the literature covering this subject takes the perspective of higher-income countries. This report addresses the technical dimension of the challenge in the …
International trade and climate change law are two distinct realms that inevitably and increasingly interact with each other. Climate change law instruments - in particular, the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement - constitute the legal framework within which States set emissions reduction targets and adopt climate mitigation measures to achieve …
This new report from the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) highlights the enormous potential of embracing the potential of wind energy. In just five years, five developing countries could add 3.5 GW of capacity, an extra US$12.5 bn for their economies and create 130,000 FTE work-years. The five countries – …
This study combines pre-COVID-19 household surveys with 2020 macro data to simulate changes in household economic welfare and poverty rates through job losses, labor income changes, and non-labor (remittance) income changes during 2020 in Brazil, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, South Africa, and Türkiye. It first presents an in-depth analysis of …
This study offers the first consistent attempt to identify how energy sector decarbonization policies have affected the energy mix over the past four decades across more than 100 developing countries. It applies systematic regression analysis to five energy sector decarbonization outcomes and more than 75 policy instruments aggregated into seven …
About half of the world’s oil and gas is produced by “middle-income” developing countries. These countries could face a significant drop in government revenue due to the global shift away from fossil fuels. The shift away from oil and gas will also contribute to job displacement and economic insecurity for …
This is a challenge for food security globally, but particularly for net food-importing developing countries. And unlike in previous food crises, they now face a double burden. They not only pay higher prices for the food they import, but the price increase is exacerbated by the depreciation of their currency …
This paper uses a global data set from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to assess the scale of funding for nature-based solutions to climate change aimed at developing countries. It also examines how effectively this funding is being put to use. International development finance – including climate finance …
Plastics leakage to the ocean and, more broadly, the environment has become a pressing issue for many developing countries. While a number of development co-operation initiatives with a focus on tackling plastic pollution have recently emerged, there is currently no comprehensive assessment of the volume and scope of international development …
The consequences of climate change in developing countries are worsening fast: many ecosystems will shortly reach points of irreversible damage, and socio-economic costs will continue to rise. To alleviate the future impacts on populations and economies, policy makers are looking for the spaces where they can make the greatest difference. …
Humanity is at a crossroads - a moment of great risk and great opportunity. One path leads to attractive growth and development; the other to great difficulties and destruction. As shown by each successive report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, climate change is occurring at a faster pace …
Achieving global goals for access to energy and mitigation of climate change will require a quadrupling of present levels of solar photovoltaic, nine times current wind power generation and a doubling of the geothermal power generation in the developing world by 2025. To reach this objective, large amounts of private …
This report analyses the intersection of HIV, COVID-19 and public debt in developing countries. The collision between COVID-19 and a crippling debt crisis have reversed decades of progress - putting present and future investments in health and HIV at risk. Pragmatic options to address the pandemic triad are proposed.
This report was produced jointly by IRENA and the United Nations Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS). It provides an overview of deployment trends, drivers, barriers and opportunities for energy transition in LLDCs, while focusing on the …
As developing countries increasingly transition from planning to implementation of their National Adaptation Plan (NAP) processes and nationally determined contributions (NDCs), a growing number have prepared or plan to prepare financing strategies for adaptation. These strategies typically set out a nationally coordinated approach to identifying and securing financing for initiatives …
The ripple effects of the war in Ukraine have disrupted energy and food markets. Among many other factors, supply chain disruptions and price spikes in key commodities have been pushing the world towards a precarious inflationary surge. This will have immediate and devastating effects on household welfare—with those in poverty …
