Selected policy reports

Abstract:

• The 2025 Economic Update for the Central African Republic (CAR) analyzes the 2024 economic and poverty trends, provides a baseline outlook for 2025-27, and explores strategies to optimize multidimensional wealth for sustainable growth and prosperity. The report is divided into two chapters: Chapter 1 reviews recent economic developments and poverty dynamics, while Chapter 2 focuses on leveraging CAR’s natural, produced, and human capital to address persistent challenges and unlock prosperity.

Abstract:

• The Central African Republic (CAR) Climate Change and Development Report (CCDR) provides an in-depth analysis of the country’s vulnerability to climate change and its implications for sustainable development. The report identifies key challenges, including frequent extreme weather events such as floods and droughts, deforestation, and weak institutional capacity. These challenges threaten the livelihoods of rural populations, exacerbate food insecurity, and hinder economic development. 

However, the CCDR also highlights significant opportunities for CAR to transition toward a more resilient and sustainable future. By promoting climate-smart agriculture, sustainable forest management, and renewable energy development, the country can mitigate the effects of climate change while unlocking new economic growth avenues. The report provides strategic recommendations to strengthen institutional capacities, integrate climate action into national development plans, and mobilize climate finance to support resilience-building initiatives.

The CCDR serves as a roadmap for operationalizing climate action in CAR, calling for stronger governance, enhanced stakeholder engagement, and innovative financing mechanisms to help the country adapt to climate challenges while promoting sustainable development.

Abstract:

• It is now clear that a narrow focus on the growth of gross domestic product (GDP) is insufficient to achieve humanity's aspirations for sustainable prosperity. Well-functioning ecosystems and educated populations are requisites for sustainable wellbeing. These and other too-often-neglected ingredients of national wealth must be addressed if the development path is to be sustainable. The Changing Wealth of Nations 2021: Managing Assets for the Future provides the most comprehensive accounting of the wealth of nations, an in-depth analysis of the evolution of wealth, and pathways to build wealth for the future. This report, and the accompanying global database, firmly establishes comprehensive wealth as a measure of sustainability and a key component of country analytics. It expands the coverage of wealth accounts and improves our understanding of the quality of all assets, notably, natural capital. Wealth, the stock of produced, natural, and human capital, is measured as the sum of assets that yield a stream of benefits over time. Changes in the wealth of nations matter because they reflect the change in countries' assets that underpin future income. Countries regularly track GDP as an indicator of their economic progress, but not wealth, and national wealth has a more direct and long-term impact on people's lives. This report provides a new set of tools and analysis to help policy makers navigate risks and to guide collective action. Wealth accounts can be applied in macroeconomic analysis to areas of major policy concern such as climate change and natural resource management. This report can be used to look beyond GDP, to gauge nations' economic well-being, and to promote sustainable prosperity.