The WB World Development Indicators, a tool for shaping development strategies of nations worldwide

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In analysing the economic performance, monitoring development programs and progress and designing development strategies of nations worldwide - including developing and less developed countries - a particularly useful resource is the World Development Indicators (WDI) of the World Bank. This tool is one of the most authoritative and complete dataset containing statistical information on more than 200 countries and territories worldwide, including data on economy, poverty, education, health, jobs, social protection, gender, environment (use of natural resources, such as water and energy, and various measures of environmental degradation, including pollution, deforestation, and loss of habitat), level of private investment and performance, financial system development, infrastructure, transparency, accountability, and corruption in the public sector, business regulatory environment and public sector policies.

For development consultants, researchers, analysts, academics and students of international development, the WDI represents an invaluable research tool that permits them to easily identify and locate information on economic trends and developments worldwide. Moreover, a useful “global links” section in the WDI database presents, for each economy and main regional aggregations in the world, a series of indicators on the size and direction of the merchandise flows, including measures of trade, tariff barriers, trade facilitation, as well as external trade and aid dependance. With regard to Kenya, for instance, data comparing the country's economic and social performances in the years 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2018 are available here.

With particular regard to African countries, the World Bank has also developed a specific tool, called “Africa Development Indicators” (ADI), gathering indicators on social and economic conditions across the continent, collected since 1960 from officially recognised international sources. This tool, although still available on-line, was however dismissed in 2011 and integrated into the WDI, that currently allows consultation of statistical data both disaggregated for single country and aggregated for each main regional markets (ex. Sub-Saharan Africa).

Among the most interesting indicators, the “structure of output” index compares the contribution of the various sectors of the economy to the GDP. In Kenya, for instance, the structure of output indicator shows that the contribution of agriculture to the GDP in 2018 was 34%, while the contributions of industry, manufacturing and services represented respectively 16%, 8% and 42.7% in the same year.

Other useful indicators are the structure of merchandise and services imports/exports, measuring the volume (in USD millions) and the percentage of trade of both goods (aggregated in food, agricultural raw materials, fuels, ores and metals and manufactures), and services (transport, travel, insurance and financial services, computer, information, communications, and other commercial services) exchanged by each country/region with the rest of the world.