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Financing Firm Growth: The Role of Capital Markets in Low- and Middle-Income Countries shows that the gap in capital market financing between low- and middle-income countries and high-income countries has narrowed, with resulting benefits for both the firms accessing those markets and for the countries in which they operate.

Growing disparity between the rich and poor remains a critical challenge, affecting countries across all continents, irrespective of their per capita gross domestic product. This widening gap not only impedes efforts to eradicate extreme poverty but also hinders progress toward social justice and resilience-building. This publication offers a comprehensive analysis of the current challenges and future perspectives of inequality on the African continent. 

Building on the foundation of the three previous editions of Disease Control Priorities (DCP), this new fourth edition uses a country-specific approach based on collaboration to summarize, produce, and help translate economic evidence into better priority setting and capacity strengthening for universal health coverage, public health functions, pandemic preparedness and response, and intersectoral and international action for health.

Structural sources of Africa¡¯s inequality are rooted in laws, institutions, and practices that create advantages for a few but disadvantages for many. They include differences in living standards that come from inherited or unalterable characteristics, such as where people are born and their parents¡¯ education, ethnicity, religion, and gender. They also arise from market and institutional distortions that privilege some firms, farms, and workers to access markets, employment, and opportunities while limiting access for the majority and limiting earning opportunities.

Services are a new force for innovation, trade, and growth in East Asia and Pacific. The dramatic diffusion of digital technologies and partial policy reforms in services--from finance, communication, and transport to retail, health, and education--is transforming these economies. The result is higher productivity and changing jobs in the services sector, as well as in the manufacturing sectors that use these services.

Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development¡ªwith the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters.