People
Who carries the consequences?
Who is affected, included, excluded, enabled, displaced, trusted, or unheard?
Research and evidence
How LEAD48 Knows What It Knows
Research methodology and evidence standards
Nothing here is a finished account of any region. The research says what LEAD48 sees and where its evidence stops, so that people who know more can test it. Work that confirms it is useful; work that overturns part of it, with evidence, is more useful still.
From research to report
- ResearchReviewed sources on each region, each with its publisher, date, geography, population and limits.
- Regional RealityWhat the evidence shows about the region, written by the research team and enriched by regional contributors.
- ProgrammeEvery session traces back to the evidence that led to it.
- Live EvidenceWhat participants add during the movement, recorded as their contribution, not as a statistical sample of the region.
- Baton TransformationThe question the region received, changed by what its reality showed, and passed on.
- LEAD48 Global Leadership Report 2027Built from every region's five documented outputs.
Standards the site enforces
- Every claim on a region page cites a source in the register below.
- An SDG appears only when a cited source supports the connection.
- Every programme session links to the evidence behind it.
- Baton questions and a region's five outputs are never written in advance; they are written in the room, and stay empty until they are.
- Research gaps and other internal notes are kept out of the published data.
The LEAD48 4P Leadership Lens
People determine legitimacy. Process determines execution. Planet determines sustainability. Portfolio determines choice.
Process
What systems shape the outcome?
Which systems, institutions, rules, governance mechanisms, and delivery processes are helping or failing?
Planet
What must endure?
What are the environmental, energy, resilience, stewardship, and intergenerational consequences?
Portfolio
What must leaders choose?
What must leaders prioritize, fund, sequence, stop, scale, defer, or protect under constrained resources?
The 4Ps do not determine what a region must discuss. They help LEAD48 interpret what the regional evidence reveals.
Methodology
Contributor enrichment
LEAD48 research is evidence-led, contributor-enriched and live-tested. Contributors (practitioners, researchers, community voices, Indigenous and local knowledge holders, policymakers, educators and others) suggest evidence, identify missing realities, challenge assumptions, contribute cases and improve the questions a region asks. They do not approve a regional brief: what is published rests on the cited evidence, and what the evidence cannot yet support is not published.
SDG method
A Goal appears on a regional page only when a cited source supports the connection. SDG weighting is mechanism-based, not frequency-based or quota-based. A Primary SDG is constitutive of the regional mechanism, directly represented by a major prevailing condition or leadership priority, or represents a major outcome domain through which the Regional Reality becomes observable. A Supporting SDG remains materially relevant and traceable but does not carry the region's causal architecture. There is no required Primary/Supporting ratio across regions.
Anti-homogenization
No region is presented as a single story. Each regional page names, from the evidence, who experiences the region differently and where it differs inside itself.
Limitations
Every source in the register below states its own limitations, and every regional page closes with what its evidence cannot show.
Source register
Each source is recorded once and reused wherever it is cited.
- Public Trust in Government: 1958-2025
Pew Research Center · 2025-12-04 · Evidence period: 1958-2025 · Geography: United States
Limitations: United States only; it says nothing about trust in Canada or Mexico. Measures trust in the federal government in Washington, one survey question over time.
- Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Chapter 14: North America
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Working Group II, Sixth Assessment Report · 2022 · Evidence period: Assessed literature to 2021 · Geography: Canada, Mexico and the United States
Limitations: An assessment of published literature with a 2021 cut-off. Confidence levels vary by finding and are stated with each one.
- Indigenous population continues to grow and is much younger than the non-Indigenous population, although the pace of growth has slowed
Statistics Canada, The Daily · 2022-09-21 · Evidence period: 2021 Census of Population (with 2016 comparison) · Geography: Canada
Limitations: Canada only. Statistics Canada notes that growth partly reflects response mobility (people answering the Indigenous identity questions differently from one census to the next), and that some reserves and settlements were incompletely enumerated.
- The 2025 AI Index Report
Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) · 2025 · Evidence period: 2024 · Geography: Global, with country comparisons
Limitations: Investment figures come from commercial data providers and cover private investment only. Country comparisons say nothing about who inside a country benefits.
- Confidence in institutions and the media, 2023
Statistics Canada · 2024-02-13 · Evidence period: Collected October 20 to December 3, 2023 · Geography: Canada
Limitations: Self-reported confidence from one survey period, and "high confidence" is defined as a score of 4 or 5 on a 1-to-5 scale, which compresses the middle of the distribution. Excludes the territories. Not directly comparable with the U.S. Pew trust question, which asks a different thing.
- Ending long-term drinking water advisories
Indigenous Services Canada · 2026-09-10 · Evidence period: November 2015 to September 10, 2026 · Geography: Canada (First Nations communities on reserve, south of 60°)
Limitations: An administrative count of advisories, not a measure of water security: lifting an advisory does not guarantee it stays lifted, and private systems, semi-public systems and communities north of 60° are counted differently or not at all. The page is a live counter, so the numbers move; these were read on September 10, 2026.
- Building Foundations for Tomorrow: Assessing Housing-Enabling Infrastructure Across Canada (National Infrastructure Assessment, Report 1)
Canadian Infrastructure Council · 2025 · Evidence period: Condition data for 2022 · Geography: Canada
Limitations: Condition ratings are self-reported by the asset owners, mostly municipalities, rather than independently assessed, and the data are from 2022. The scope is deliberately narrow: roads, bridges, energy, health and school buildings are outside the headline figure. This is the first report in the series, so there is no prior-year baseline.
- Budget 2025: Long-term Fiscal Sustainability
Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (Canada) · 2025-12-17 · Evidence period: Baseline 2024-25, projected to 2055-56 · Geography: Canada (federal government)
Limitations: A 30-year projection resting on Finance Canada's own demographic and economic assumptions, not an outcome. It covers the federal government only, so it says nothing about the provincial and municipal budgets where most infrastructure and service delivery pressure sits.
- The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2026 to 2036
Congressional Budget Office · 2026-02-11 · Evidence period: Fiscal years 2026 to 2036 · Geography: United States (federal government)
Limitations: A projection under current law, not a forecast: it excludes appropriation acts passed after 14 January 2026 and any later legislation, and runs only ten years. CBO published data rather than a narrative long-term outlook in 2026.
- 2025 Report Card for America's Infrastructure
American Society of Civil Engineers · 2025-03-25 · Evidence period: Condition as of 2025; investment need and gap modelled for 2024 to 2033 · Geography: United States
Limitations: ASCE is a professional body that advocates for higher infrastructure investment, so this is an expert assessment against its own criteria rather than an independent audit. Its own pages state the gap as both $3.6 trillion and $3.7 trillion; the economics page and ASCE's news release say $3.7 trillion.
- Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters: United States summary
NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information · 2025 · Evidence period: 1980 to 2024 · Geography: United States
Limitations: The series has been retired, with no updates beyond calendar year 2024, so there is no official figure for 2025 or later; NOAA states the 1980-2024 archive remains authoritative. It counts direct losses only, above a $1 billion threshold that is sensitive to inflation, and draws partly on private insurance data that is not public.
- Alaska Native Issues: Federal Agencies Could Enhance Support for Native Village Efforts to Address Environmental Threats
U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO-22-104241) · 2022-05-18 · Evidence period: Federal funding for fiscal years 2016 to 2020 · Geography: United States (Alaska)
Limitations: Published in 2022, so it predates later federal climate and infrastructure funding, and the status of its recommendations is not captured here. It is Alaska-specific: it does not describe Tribal Nations in the contiguous United States. Threat counts rest on agency-supplied assessments.
- Artificial Intelligence: Generative AI Use and Management at Federal Agencies
U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO-25-107653) · 2025-07-29 · Evidence period: Agency AI use-case inventories for 2023 and 2024 · Geography: United States (federal agencies)
Limitations: Counts are self-reported by agencies and cover twelve selected agencies, not the whole federal government. It measures adoption and management practice, not outcomes for the public. Federal AI guidance changed in early 2025, so the two years are not a clean like-for-like trend.
- Evaluation of the Indigenous Guardians Initiative: Internal review
Parks Canada Agency · 2025 · Evidence period: Activities 2021-22 to 2024-25; fieldwork August 2023 to July 2024 · Geography: Canada
Limitations: An internal review, not an independent evaluation, and it explicitly did not examine the performance of individual programs, "the aims of which are determined by the values and priorities of Indigenous communities". It covers Parks Canada's portion of the federal investment only. So it documents delivery and a funding-cliff risk, not measured stewardship outcomes.
- Literacy, numeracy and adaptive problem solving skills of Canadians: Results from the 2022 Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies
Statistics Canada · 2024-12-10 · Evidence period: Collected 2022 to 2023, compared with the 2012 cycle · Geography: Canada, compared with 27 participating OECD countries
Limitations: Cycle 2 data exclude the territories. The assessment was administered in English or French, so performance can reflect language proficiency as well as skill, which matters in a country with a large immigrant population. Scores are sample estimates, so a precise rank position within the top ten is not established.
- Measuring Canada's economic performance relative to the United States
Statistics Canada, Economic and Social Reports · 2026-03-25 · Evidence period: First quarter 1997 to third quarter 2025 · Geography: Canada relative to the United States
Limitations: These are relative index levels rebased to the first quarter of 1997, not absolute productivity levels or a dollar gap, so the base period shapes the headline. Cross-country comparison depends on purchasing-power conversion and hours-worked measurement, both of which are revised.
- Job mismatch among core working age immigrants with postsecondary education
Statistics Canada · 2026-04-07 · Evidence period: September 2024 and September 2025 Labour Force Survey data combined · Geography: Canada
Limitations: A custom tabulation from the Labour Force Survey, pooling two September snapshots, so seasonal composition is embedded. Overqualification is partly self-reported, and the analysis identifies the mismatch without separating its causes: credential recognition, language, networks and discrimination are not distinguished.
- Analysis on artificial intelligence use by businesses in Canada, second quarter of 2026
Statistics Canada, Canadian Survey on Business Conditions · 2026-06-11 · Evidence period: Collected April 1 to May 6, 2026, reporting on the preceding 12 months · Geography: Canada
Limitations: Self-reported adoption with no measure of intensity or outcome: "using AI" covers everything from one chatbot to redesigned operations. The rolling 12-month reference window differs by respondent, and roughly half the sample did not respond. No comparison with the United States is made.
- Funding Status: Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act
U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO-26-108434) · 2026-07-22 · Evidence period: Fiscal years 2022 to 2025, status as of September 30, 2025 · Geography: United States
Limitations: A financial status report, not an evaluation of what was built. Obligation and disbursement are accounting stages, and capital programmes legitimately lag, so a low disbursement rate is a signal to examine rather than proof of failure. It covers four agencies only.
- 2026 Section 706 Report on the Deployment of Advanced Telecommunications Capability
Federal Communications Commission (FCC 26-55) · 2026-08-14 · Evidence period: Broadband Data Collection deployment data as of June 30, 2025 · Geography: United States, with rural, urban and Tribal lands breakdowns
Limitations: This measures availability, not adoption, affordability or actual subscription: a household counted as served may not have service. It rests on provider-reported data. The Commission's conclusion that deployment is "reasonable and timely" is a policy judgement that reverses the 2024 report's finding, not a change in the underlying data.
- Large Firms With at Least 20 Employees Biggest AI Users
U.S. Census Bureau, Business Trends and Outlook Survey · 2026-05-26 · Evidence period: Collection periods December 14, 2025 to May 3, 2026 · Geography: United States
Limitations: An experimental Census data product. Use is self-reported over a two-week window and says nothing about depth, spending or realised productivity. The headline rate is firm-weighted, so "most firms do not use AI" and "many workers are at firms that do" can both be true. The trend window is under six months.
- Tribal Broadband: Additional Assistance to Recipients Would Better Support Implementation of $3 Billion in Federal Grants
U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO-24-106541) · 2024-06-24 · Evidence period: Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program round one, completed September 2023 · Geography: United States, Tribal lands
Limitations: The interview sample is explicitly non-generalizable and covers round one only. The report examines grant administration and financial sustainability. It contains no data on networks completed or households connected, so it cannot show connectivity outcomes.
- NTIA Announces Tribal Broadband Program Reforms to Maximize Tribal Connectivity and Reduce Red Tape
National Telecommunications and Information Administration · 2025-11-12 · Evidence period: Cumulative programme awards to November 2025 · Geography: United States, Tribal lands
Limitations: An agency press release reporting awards made, not construction completed, service activated or households connected. No connectivity outcome can be inferred from it.
- 15 Years of Green City, Clean Waters
Philadelphia Water Department · 2026-07-16 · Evidence period: 2011 to 2026, against a programme running to 2036 · Geography: United States, Philadelphia's combined sewer service area
Limitations: Self-reported compliance reporting by the water department, not an independent audit. A "Greened Acre" is a regulatory accounting unit for impervious area managed, not a measure of water quality, health or flood risk, and the volume figure is anticipated rather than metered. No Year 15 statutory evaluation plan was published at the time of reading.
- Employment and Unemployment Among Youth, Summer 2026
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · 2026-08-20 · Evidence period: April to July 2026, compared with July 2025 · Geography: United States
Limitations: A July snapshot that is not seasonally adjusted, so it is not comparable with monthly headline series, and it covers all 16 to 24 year olds rather than recent graduates. Subgroup estimates are volatile.
- Employment Projections: 2025 to 2035
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics · 2026-08-27 · Evidence period: Base year 2025, projected to 2035 · Geography: United States
Limitations: A projection, not an outcome. BLS states that "this precision in the data does not account for the inherent uncertainty of predicting long-term changes in the labor market" and applies AI adjustments conservatively. It assumes full employment in the target year.
- The State of Generative AI Adoption in 2025
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis · 2025-11-13 · Evidence period: Real-Time Population Survey, August 2024 to August 2025 · Geography: United States
Limitations: Time savings are self-reported, not measured output, and the productivity figure is an upper bound from a stylised model. The authors state plainly that the correlation "cannot be interpreted as causal". Published as central-bank blog research rather than peer-reviewed work.
- U.S. Population Growth Slows Due to Historic Decline in Net International Migration
U.S. Census Bureau · 2026-01-27 · Evidence period: July 1, 2024 to July 1, 2025 (Vintage 2025 estimates) · Geography: United States, by region and state
Limitations: These are estimates, not a census, and the Bureau warns that "year-to-year comparisons in the estimates should only be done within the same vintage" because of methodological updates. Part of the measured fall reflects a changed estimation method, and the 2026 figure quoted in the release is a projection.
- Worst Case Housing Needs: 2025 Report to Congress
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development · 2025-11-20 · Evidence period: Primarily the 2023 American Housing Survey, compared with 2019 and 2021 · Geography: United States, by region and metropolitan category
Limitations: The survey data are from 2023 and the survey runs every two years. The definition is deliberately narrow, so it undercounts wider cost burden. The report's transmittal letter advances a contested policy interpretation about immigration and demand, which is the Department's argument rather than a finding from the survey data.
- NOAA Atlas 15 Pilot Technical Report, Version 1.1.p
NOAA National Weather Service, Office of Water Prediction · 2025-03-25 · Evidence period: Montana pilot domain; present-day estimates for base year 2023 and projections to 2100 · Geography: United States, piloted over Montana ahead of national rollout
Limitations: The report states its values "are preliminary and intended for comparison and feedback purposes only as this analysis has not completed the peer review process". Results are for the Montana pilot and do not generalise nationally; differences run in both directions. Projections depend on downscaled climate models and emissions scenarios, and the publication timetable has already moved once.
- Rezoning for Housing: repeal of citywide rezoning
The City of Calgary · 2026-07-21 · Evidence period: September 2023 to August 2026 · Geography: Canada, Calgary, Alberta
Limitations: A city project page rather than a decision record, and its own banner gives the effective date as August 4, 2024 while its timeline gives August 4, 2026; the timeline date is used here and the discrepancy is noted. The page does not say how many parcels either decision affected.
- Housing starts up 5.6% in 2025 from 2024
Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation · 2026-01-16 · Evidence period: Calendar years 2024 and 2025 · Geography: Canada, including census metropolitan areas
Limitations: Starts are not completions and not occupancy, and metropolitan figures cover a wider area than a city's own boundary. CMHC attributes national gains partly to record rental construction, so no single municipal policy can be read out of these numbers.
- Five Manitoba First Nations reach major milestones in improving access to safe drinking water
Indigenous Services Canada · 2026-06-23 · Evidence period: To June 2026 · Geography: Canada, Manitoba (Treaty 1, 2 and 5 territories)
Limitations: A government news release announcing construction milestones, not an evaluation. It reports one advisory lifted of the five communities named, and no health or water-quality outcome data.
- Active long-term drinking water advisories
Indigenous Services Canada · 2026-09-11 · Evidence period: Numbers as of September 10, 2026 · Geography: Canada, First Nations public systems on reserve
Limitations: A live administrative list, so the numbers move; these were read on September 10, 2026. It covers public systems on reserve funded by the department and says nothing about water quality where no advisory is in force.
- St George Rainway
City of Vancouver · 2025-09-01 · Evidence period: Project engagement and design to 2025 · Geography: Canada, Mount Pleasant, Vancouver, British Columbia
Limitations: A city engagement page: every benefit is stated as design intent in the future tense, and no measured performance is published. The page's construction dates are out of date, and the City's own project page could not be read directly at the time of writing, so the schedule is not confirmed here.
- World Bank Expands Lifeline to Small States hit by Disasters
World Bank · 2024-11-12 · Evidence period: Announced at COP29, November 2024 · Geography: Small states worldwide, including the Caribbean
Limitations: An institutional announcement of a financing instrument, not an evaluation of it. Eligibility is not adoption: most eligible countries had not yet written the clause into loan agreements, and nothing here measures what deferral achieved for a recovering economy.
- Food Security Initiative Expanded, Extended to 2030
Caribbean Community (CARICOM) · 2025-02-21 · Evidence period: 2022 to late 2024, with the target extended to 2030 · Geography: CARICOM member states
Limitations: A communiqué from the Heads of Government meeting, not an independent evaluation. The production increase is self-reported at regional level and is not the same measure as the import-bill target the initiative was set against.
- Uruguay asciende 10 posiciones a nivel global en el índice de gobierno digital
AGESIC (Agencia de Gobierno Electrónico y Sociedad de la Información y del Conocimiento), Uruguay · 2024 · Evidence period: UN E-Government Survey 2024, compared with 2022 · Geography: Uruguay, compared with Latin America and the Caribbean
Limitations: A government agency reporting its own country's index position. The E-Government Development Index measures online service provision, infrastructure and human capital, not whether services work for the people who need them most.
- Behind the scenes work makes PNA's Vessel Day Scheme a success
Parties to the Nauru Agreement · 2016-10-29 · Evidence period: 2010 to 2016 · Geography: Western and central Pacific: the waters of eight island nations and one territory
Limitations: Published by the scheme's own secretariat, so it reports its own performance. Revenue figures are from 2016 and cover the purse seine fishery only; nothing here measures how the revenue was distributed within each country or what happened to fish stocks.
- US $4.5 million insurance payout for Tonga to support Cyclone Harold response and recovery
World Bank · 2020-05-01 · Evidence period: Tropical Cyclone Harold, April 2020 · Geography: Tonga, within a Pacific regional risk pool
Limitations: A single payout reported by one of the institutions behind the facility. Parametric insurance pays on a trigger rather than on assessed damage, so a payout is not a measure of loss or of recovery, and this says nothing about the wider programme's coverage or cost.
- Review of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap
Australian Government Productivity Commission · 2024-02-07 · Evidence period: The National Agreement since 2020, reviewed to 2024 · Geography: Australia
Limitations: A review of implementation of the Priority Reforms, not of outcomes across every target. It assesses whether governments changed how they work, so it is evidence about the architecture of shared decision-making rather than about any single programme.
- About ASEAN Single Window
ASEAN Single Window · 2022 (undated page whose status text stops in 2022, accessed 2026-09-19) · Evidence period: 2020 to 2022 · Geography: The ASEAN Member States
Limitations: Published by the programme itself, so it reports its own progress. It counts documents exchanged rather than trade outcomes, says nothing about cost to run or about the traders who cannot use it, and its status text stops in 2022, so it is not evidence of current volumes. This record was read on the programme's own website on 2026-09-19. That website has since appeared in search indexes under unrelated gambling titles, so the link now points to ASEAN's official Single Window page on asean.org, which describes the same programme but does not carry the 2021 figure quoted here.
- About us
AHA Centre, the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management · 2026 (undated page, accessed 2026-09-19) · Evidence period: 2011 to 2026 · Geography: The ASEAN Member States
Limitations: The Centre's own account of its mandate, not an evaluation of how it performed in any particular emergency. The page is internally inconsistent about membership, referring to both ten and eleven Member States, and it carries no publication date.
- Singapore Doubles Power Import Capacity Under LTMS-PIP Phase 2
Energy Market Authority, Singapore · 2024-09-20 · Evidence period: June 2022 to 2026 · Geography: Lao PDR, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore
Limitations: A media release from one participating government's regulator, announcing a licence extension. It reports traded capacity rather than delivered energy, and says nothing about price, utilisation, or the rest of the ASEAN Power Grid's planned interconnections.
- Viet Nam Overview
World Bank · 2026 (living country page with no publication date, accessed 2026-09-19) · Evidence period: 1986 to 2023 · Geography: Viet Nam
Limitations: A summary page rather than a study: no methodology of its own, no publication date, and figures that run to 2023. It states a development trajectory and a set of institutional challenges; it does not evaluate any particular policy, and one country's path is not the region's.
- Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Nickel
U.S. Geological Survey · 2026-02 · Evidence period: 2024, with 2025 estimated · Geography: World, reported by country of mine production
Limitations: Mine production and reserves only. It does not cover smelting, refining, downstream investment or who owns the capacity, the 2025 figures are estimates, and it reports quantities rather than the environmental, labour or revenue effects of where the mining happens.
- Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2024 · Geography: South Asia, and each country in the region separately
Limitations: A modeled ILO estimate, not a direct count, and participation rates say nothing about the quality, security or pay of the work counted. Much of the unpaid and informal work women do is not captured, so the figure measures recorded participation rather than economic contribution.
- Personal remittances, received (% of GDP)
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2024 (series values for 2023 and 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2023 to 2024 · Geography: Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India
Limitations: Recorded flows only: informal transfers are missing, and a share of GDP says nothing about who receives the money, what it is spent on, or what the household gave up to earn it. It measures dependence at national scale, not household outcomes.
- International tourism, receipts (% of total exports), Maldives
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2020 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2018 to 2020 · Geography: Maldives
Limitations: The series stops in 2020, and 2020 is a pandemic year, so it shows the structure of the economy rather than its current position. It measures concentration of export earnings, not fiscal space, debt or adaptation cost.
- Trade, South Asia Regional Integration
World Bank · 2026 (undated programme page, accessed 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: Drawn from the Bank's regional trade work, including its 2018 regional trade report · Geography: South Asia
Limitations: A programme page by an institution that funds regional connectivity work, so it presents the case for it. It carries no publication date, the estimate of potential trade is a projection rather than an observation, and recorded trade excludes the informal cross-border trade that partly substitutes for it.
- Unified Payments Interface (UPI) Product Statistics
National Payments Corporation of India · 2026-08 (monthly series, read on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: April 2026 to August 2026 · Geography: India
Limitations: Published by the system's own operator, and it counts transactions and banks, not people. Nothing here shows who holds an account, who has a device or connectivity, who transacts and who does not, so it measures the scale of the rail rather than participation in it.
- Unemployment, youth total (% of total labor force ages 15-24), modeled ILO estimate
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2024 · Geography: Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations: A modeled ILO estimate. It counts people looking for work, so it misses those who have stopped looking and says nothing about the quality or security of the jobs that exist. In labour markets with large migrant workforces the citizen and non-citizen experience differ sharply, and a national rate does not separate them.
- Labor force participation rate, female (% of female population ages 15+), modeled ILO estimate
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2024 · Geography: Thirteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq
Limitations: A modeled ILO estimate that counts every woman resident in the country. In the Gulf states a large share of the female workforce is migrant, so a high participation rate there is not a measure of citizen women's participation, and the two should not be read as the same thing. The rate also says nothing about pay, security or seniority.
- Renewable internal freshwater resources per capita (cubic meters)
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2021 · Geography: Fourteen countries across the Gulf, North Africa, the Levant and Iraq, against the world average
Limitations: Internal renewable resources only. It excludes desalination, treated wastewater and river flows originating outside a country, all of which are central to how several of these states actually supply water, so it measures the natural endowment rather than available supply.
- Oil rents (% of GDP)
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2021 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2018 to 2021 · Geography: Eight hydrocarbon-producing economies in the region
Limitations: Oil rents only: gas is not included, and the series stops in 2021, a period that includes the pandemic collapse in prices. Rents as a share of GDP move with the oil price as much as with the structure of an economy, so a fall in the share is not by itself evidence of diversification.
- Aqaba-Amman Water Desalination and Conveyance
Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, World Bank Group · 2025-12-18 · Evidence period: Project approved December 2025, for construction and long-term operation · Geography: Jordan, from Aqaba on the Red Sea to Amman
Limitations: A guarantee record published at approval, so it describes what is planned and financed rather than what has been delivered, used or paid for over the project's life. Nothing here establishes tariffs, affordability, energy cost in operation, or what the commitment displaces in Jordan's budget.
- Overview of Qatar's labour reforms
International Labour Organization · 2022-04-07 · Evidence period: November 2020 to August 2022 · Geography: Qatar
Limitations: Published by a partner to the reform programme, so it reports on work it is part of. It counts approvals and coverage rather than outcomes for workers, and its account of remaining problems is qualitative: the scale of retaliation, unpaid wages and enforcement delay is described but not measured.
- Population ages 15-64, total
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2024 (series values for 2014 to 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2014 to 2024 · Geography: Sub-Saharan Africa, against the world total
Limitations: A count of people of working age. It says nothing about who is working, at what productivity, for what earnings or under what protection, so it measures labour supply arriving rather than opportunity available.
- Vulnerable employment, total (% of total employment), modeled ILO estimate
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2024 · Geography: Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations: A modeled ILO estimate of a category, not a measure of informality itself, and the label carries a judgement the data does not: own-account work includes both precarious survival activity and functioning small enterprise. It shows where wage employment is not the norm, not what those livelihoods are worth.
- Access to electricity (% of population)
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2023 · Geography: Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations: A connection count. It says nothing about reliability, hours of supply, affordability, capacity or whether the power is used productively, so it measures access rather than what access makes possible.
- Manufacturing, value added (% of GDP)
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2023 · Geography: Sub-Saharan Africa and nine countries across the region, against the world
Limitations: A share of GDP, so it moves with everything else in the economy, and it counts recorded manufacturing only. It shows where processing and manufacturing sit in an economy, not where along a value chain the value is captured, and not what would have to change for that to shift.
- About the AfCFTA
AfCFTA Secretariat, African Union · 2026 (undated page, accessed 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: March 2018 to 2026 · Geography: The African Union's 55 member states and eight Regional Economic Communities
Limitations: The Secretariat's own account of the agreement it administers, and it reports mandate and milestones rather than trade. It gives no figure for trade actually conducted under the agreement, none for customs, standards, payments or logistics performance, and none for intra-African trade, so it establishes the legal position and nothing about the operating one.
- GDP per person employed (constant 2021 PPP $)
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2024 · Geography: European states inside and outside the European Union, against the United States and the world
Limitations: Output per worker, not per hour, so it moves with working time and participation as well as with productivity itself. It says nothing about how output is distributed, what it costs in hours, or what the differences between these economies are made of.
- Research and development expenditure (% of GDP)
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2023 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2023 · Geography: European states inside and outside the European Union, against the world
Limitations: Spending, not results. It measures what goes into research, not what comes out, and nothing here shows whether an invention is financed, commercialised or scaled afterwards, which is the question this evidence is being used to raise.
- Age dependency ratio, old (% of working-age population)
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2024 · Geography: European states inside and outside the European Union, against the world
Limitations: An age ratio, not a measure of dependence: it assumes everyone over 65 is supported and everyone of working age is working, which describes neither participation nor productivity. It shows the structural pressure on labour, care and pension systems rather than the outcome of it.
- Net migration
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2024 · Geography: European states inside and outside the European Union
Limitations: A net figure, so arrivals and departures cancel each other out and neither is visible. It covers a single year, it includes returning nationals alongside new arrivals, and it carries no information about who moved, why, under what status or what happened after arrival.
- Energy imports, net (% of energy use)
World Bank, World Development Indicators · 2015 (latest available series values, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-20) · Evidence period: 2015 · Geography: European states inside and outside the European Union, against the world
Limitations: The series stops in 2015, which is before the changes in European energy sourcing after 2022, so it shows the structural position rather than the current one. It measures import dependence as a share of use, not price, security of a particular supply route, or what an economy could substitute.
- Pacific Renewable Energy Investment Facility (project 49450-004)
Asian Development Bank · 2026-09-21 (project record read) · Evidence period: Facility record as published by ADB, read 2026-09-21 · Geography: Eleven small Pacific Island countries
Limitations: A project record, not an evaluation. It documents the facility's design, scale and the imported-fuel dependence and small-market context it was built for. It does not establish delivered generating capacity, reliability, cost-effectiveness, transformation of any energy system, or how benefits were distributed within communities, and the existence of a facility is not evidence of its impact. No independent evaluation is cited on the record.
- ADB, Partners Open Renewable Based Minigrid to Deliver Clean Electricity to Niuafo'ou
Asian Development Bank · 2024-10-14 · Evidence period: Commissioning, October 2024 · Geography: Niuafo'ou, Tonga (Polynesia)
Limitations: A commissioning announcement. It records that the minigrid was commissioned in October 2024 and is designed to supply electricity up to 24 hours a day. It does not establish verified long-term reliability at that level, maintenance performance, lifecycle cost, or sustained displacement of diesel.
- The Pacific Atoll Countries: Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu. Country Climate and Development Report
World Bank · 2024-11-14 · Evidence period: Projections to 2070-2110 · Geography: Kiribati, the Republic of the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu (Micronesia and Polynesia)
Limitations: The submersion and cost figures are scenario projections, not certain forecasts. The report does not establish that abandonment or migration is inevitable, that the three countries face identical exposure, or that any of the three adaptation pathways has been chosen.
- Te Ohanga Maori 2023: The Maori Economy
New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, with BERL · 2025-03 · Evidence period: 2018 to 2023 · Geography: New Zealand
Limitations: The report notes its own limitation that GDP-based measurement misses informal, non-market, unpaid and care work. It does not establish that the growth is equitably distributed, that it benefits all Maori, that governance quality caused it, or any causal impact of collective ownership.
- Productivity update, September 2026
Australian Government Productivity Commission · 2026-09-03 · Evidence period: June quarter 2026 and the year to June 2026 · Geography: Australia
Limitations: Quarterly and annual productivity measurement. It does not establish institutional incapacity, does not compare Australia's capability with any other country in this region, and offers no causal explanation of the result.
- Pacific Economic Update, May 2026: the Pacific Jobs Pathway
World Bank · 2026-05-12 · Evidence period: 2025 outturn and 2026 outlook · Geography: Pacific Island countries
Limitations: A regional synthesis whose effects vary by country. It supports no regional net-benefit verdict on labour mobility, and does not establish the effect of mobility on any single country, occupation or sector.
- Pacific Regional Labour Mobility Principles
Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat · 2025 · Evidence period: Tasked by Forum Leaders in November 2023, endorsed at the 54th Pacific Islands Forum, 2025 · Geography: Pacific Islands Forum members
Limitations: Non-binding regional guidance. It does not establish compliance by any member, outcomes for any worker, the effectiveness of any scheme, or the net impact of labour mobility.
- Labour Mobility
Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat · 2025 · Evidence period: Regional policy position as published, 2025 · Geography: Pacific Islands Forum members
Limitations: A statement of regional policy architecture. It does not establish any outcome for a worker, a household or a sending country.
- 2050 Strategy Regional Collective Actions Progress Report 2025
Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat · 2025 · Evidence period: Endorsement of the 2050 Implementation Plan in 2023 to mid-2025 · Geography: Pacific Islands Forum members and the Council of Regional Organisations of the Pacific
Limitations: A progress-reporting mechanism now exists and has reported. That is not evidence that any Regional Collective Action is complete or effective: the report itself records capacity constraints and funding gaps slowing implementation, and it does not establish action-by-action maturity.
- 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent
Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat · 2022-08-05 · Evidence period: Strategy to 2050 · Geography: Pacific Islands Forum members
Limitations: The strategy, its 2023 Implementation Plan, its baseline and its progress reports are four separate documents and must not be collapsed into one another. The strategy states intent; it establishes no implementation and no outcome.
- Statement of the Chairperson of the ASEAN Senior Economic Officials (SEOM) on the Conclusion of ASEAN DEFA Negotiations
ASEAN Secretariat (Chairperson of the ASEAN SEOM, ASEAN Philippines 2026) · 2026-05-30 · Evidence period: Negotiations concluded at the Second Meeting of the 57th ASEAN SEOM, Manila, 27-29 May 2026 · Geography: ASEAN Member States
Limitations: An official statement announcing that negotiations concluded. Concluding negotiations is not signature, ratification, entry into force or implementation, and the statement itself says signing is expected in November 2026. Its projection that the digital economy could double to USD 2 trillion by 2030 is conditional and attributed to studies it does not name. It establishes no outcome of any kind.
- Joint Communique of the 59th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting
ASEAN Secretariat · 2026-07-21 · Evidence period: Position as at 21 July 2026 · Geography: ASEAN Member States
Limitations: A negotiated communique. On DEFA it records that text negotiations have concluded and that signing is still ahead; it establishes nothing about implementation or effect.
- Testing Real-World Generative AI Systems: Global AI Assurance Pilot main report
AI Verify Foundation, with its parent the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA) · 2025 (no date stated in the report; file published in June 2025) · Evidence period: Pilot launched February 2025 · Geography: Singapore, with participating organisations from eight other geographies
Limitations: A practitioner report on a voluntary pilot of 17 self-selected applications. It reports lessons about how to test, not measured safety or effectiveness of the applications, and not how widely such testing is used. Participation is not adoption, and one high-capacity jurisdiction's pilot is not evidence about AI governance across Southeast Asia.
- What is AI Verify
AI Verify Foundation · 2026 (undated page, read 2026-09-21) · Evidence period: May 2022 to May 2025 · Geography: Singapore
Limitations: A description of a tool by the body that maintains it. It establishes what the framework is and when it was released, not how many organisations use it, what testing found, or any effect on how AI systems behave.
- Project Moonshot
AI Verify Foundation · 2026 (undated page, read 2026-09-21) · Evidence period: Tool as described in 2026 · Geography: Singapore
Limitations: A tool description. It establishes that the tool exists and what it is for, not its use, findings or effect.
- The Digital Divide Amongst MSMEs in ASEAN (ERIA Research Project Report 2024 No. 20)
Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) · 2024-09 · Evidence period: Survey fieldwork March to July 2023 · Geography: ASEAN: a web survey in all ten then-member states and a phone survey in Indonesia, Malaysia and Viet Nam
Limitations: Self-reported survey data from 2023, before generative AI spread widely. Comparability across economies is only partial: the web panel does not match official statistics, some sample segments were filled from others, headline country comparisons rest on the three phone-survey countries, and it is not a representative national estimate for any country. The report's conclusion says both surveys covered all ten member states, which contradicts its own sampling table. It measures adoption, not productivity or causal effect.
- Industrial Policy in the Digital Age: East Asia and Pacific Economic Update, April 2026 (overview)
World Bank · 2026-04 · Evidence period: Recent years to 2026 · Geography: Developing East Asia and Pacific, with named comparisons for China, Thailand and the United States
Limitations: The report states that "assessing the true pace of adoption is complicated by the absence of a universal or consistent measure of AI use". The adoption figures cover multinational subsidiaries in two economies, not all firms, and some of its AI-use mapping draws on company data rather than official statistics. Only the overview was read.
- Global Innovation Index 2025: GII 2025 results
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) · 2025 · Evidence period: Rankings mainly reflect data from 2023 to 2025 · Geography: Economy-level ranks, including China, Japan and the Republic of Korea separately
Limitations: A composite index built from many indicators. It ranks innovation capacity and outputs; it does not measure manufacturing output, automation, productivity or whether innovation reaches ordinary firms, and WIPO cautions that ranks are not directly comparable across years.
- World Development Indicators: Research and development expenditure (% of GDP)
World Bank, from UNESCO Institute for Statistics data · 2023 (series values for 2023, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-21) · Evidence period: 2022 and 2023 · Geography: China, Japan and the Republic of Korea, each separately
Limitations: An input measure: spending, not innovation outcomes, productivity or diffusion. UNESCO figures can differ slightly from OECD MSTI figures for the same economies, so the two should not be mixed. 2023 is the latest year available for all three.
- World Development Indicators: Manufacturing, value added (current US$)
World Bank · 2024 (series values for 2024, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-21) · Evidence period: 2024 · Geography: China, Japan and the Republic of Korea, each separately
Limitations: Nominal US dollars, so exchange rates move the figures heavily: Japan's fall from about USD 1.03 trillion in 2021 to USD 788 billion in 2024 largely reflects the yen, not necessarily output. A measure of scale, not of productivity, technology intensity or automation, and not a growth trend.
- World Population Prospects 2024: Summary of Results (advance unedited version)
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division · 2024-07-11 · Evidence period: Estimates to 2024; projections from 2025 · Geography: World, with named countries
Limitations: Figures for 2024 are estimates and later figures are projections. The key-findings list naming countries whose populations have peaked does not name the Republic of Korea explicitly, and the Philippines is not named as growing through 2054. It measures total population and fertility, not working-age population, labour-force participation or care demand.
- Population Estimates, August 2026 report (Jinko Suikei)
Statistics Bureau of Japan, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications · 2026-08-20 · Evidence period: Final estimates as at 1 March 2026; provisional as at 1 August 2026 · Geography: Japan
Limitations: Monthly population estimates based on the 2020 Census, to be revised once the 2025 Census counts are released; the August figures are provisional. They measure population by age, not labour-force participation, care demand or productivity.
- Preliminary Results of Birth and Death Statistics in 2025
Ministry of Data and Statistics, Republic of Korea (formerly Statistics Korea) · 2026-02-25 · Evidence period: 2023 to 2025; 2025 preliminary · Geography: Republic of Korea
Limitations: Preliminary figures for 2025. It measures births, deaths and fertility, not the age structure, working-age population, labour-force participation or care demand, and a one-year rise in fertility is not a reversal of the trend.
- Statistical Communique of the People's Republic of China on the 2025 National Economic and Social Development
National Bureau of Statistics of China · 2026-02-28 · Evidence period: End of 2025 · Geography: China
Limitations: National statistics using a working-age band of 16 to 59 rather than the 15 to 64 used elsewhere, so working-age shares are not directly comparable with Japan's or Korea's. It measures population and age structure, not labour-force participation or care demand.
- Timor-Leste Population and Housing Census 2022: Main Report
National Institute of Statistics Timor-Leste (INETL) · 2023-05 · Evidence period: Census 2022, with growth measured from 2015 · Geography: Timor-Leste
Limitations: A census count, not a projection. One country's age structure, published by the national statistics institute and hosted by UNFPA; it does not measure employment, the productivity of work, or labour-force participation.
- '연금개혁법안' 국회 통과, 내년 시행 (Pension reform bill passes the National Assembly, in force next year)
Ministry of Health and Welfare and Ministry of Economy and Finance, Republic of Korea (Korea.kr policy briefing) · 2025-03-20 · Evidence period: Legislated 20 March 2025; in force from 1 January 2026; contribution path to 2033 · Geography: Republic of Korea
Limitations: The government's own account of legislation. It establishes what was legislated, not its effect. An automatic adjustment mechanism was not legislated and was deferred to the National Assembly's special committee on structural reform, and no change to the pension age or the retirement age was made. Its projection that fund depletion moves from 2056 to 2071 depends on fund returns also rising by one percentage point.
- Pensions at a Glance 2025: Korea country note
OECD · 2025-11 · Evidence period: Rules in force after the 2025 reform; projections to the 2060s · Geography: Republic of Korea
Limitations: An independent international summary. Its fund projections are projections, on assumptions that differ from the Korean government's, which is why the two give different depletion years.
- Southeast Asia Energy Outlook 2024 (World Energy Outlook Special Report)
International Energy Agency (IEA) · 2024-10 · Evidence period: End of 2023, with scenario projections to 2035 and 2050 · Geography: The ten ASEAN member states in 2024
Limitations: IEA analysis drawing on commercial data inputs. Manufacturing figures are capacity, not production, and the plants are largely owned by Chinese companies. Its 2024 investment figure is described as an estimate, and all figures after 2024 are scenario projections. It gives no measured curtailment volume for any country.
- Integrating Solar and Wind in Southeast Asia
International Energy Agency (IEA) · 2025-09 · Evidence period: 2019 to 2025 · Geography: Southeast Asia, with country detail for Viet Nam, Thailand and Indonesia
Limitations: Qualitative on curtailment: it names curtailment and grid congestion as consequences but reports no measured curtailment volume or rate for any country.
- IRENASTAT: Electricity capacity statistics (2026 H1 dataset)
International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) · 2026 (queried from IRENASTAT on 2026-09-21) · Evidence period: End of 2025 · Geography: Viet Nam, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, each separately
Limitations: Installed capacity, not electricity generated or delivered, capacity factors or curtailment. Malaysia's 2025 values are identical to 2024 and may be carried forward. IRENA's capacity accounting differs from IEA modelling, so the two sets of figures should not be combined.
- DS592: Indonesia, Measures Relating to Raw Materials
World Trade Organization · 2022-11-30 (panel report circulated) · Evidence period: Consultations requested November 2019 to appeal notified December 2022 · Geography: Indonesia
Limitations: A dispute record. It establishes the measures and the panel's legal finding; Indonesia appealed into an Appellate Body that is not operating, so the finding is not final. It establishes nothing about value captured by domestic processing, who owns the processing capacity, revenue, processing energy, or labour, environmental or community effects.
- Bijih Nikel Tidak Boleh Diekspor Lagi per Januari 2020 (Nickel ore may no longer be exported from January 2020)
Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Republic of Indonesia (ESDM), press release 549.Pers/04/SJI/2019 · 2019-09-02 · Evidence period: Announced 2019; effective 1 January 2020 · Geography: Indonesia
Limitations: An announcement of a future ban, not evidence of how it was enforced or what it achieved. It establishes nothing about downstream investment, value capture, ownership, revenue sharing or effects on communities or producers elsewhere.
- Chairman's Statement of the 47th ASEAN Summit
ASEAN Secretariat (ASEAN Malaysia 2025) · 2025-10-26 · Evidence period: 47th ASEAN Summit, Kuala Lumpur, 2025 · Geography: ASEAN Member States
Limitations: A chairman's statement. It establishes Timor-Leste's admission as a member; it also records that Timor-Leste still has roadmap criteria to implement, and it says nothing about any ASEAN body's performance.
- The AHA Centre Annual Report 2024
AHA Centre, the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management · 2025 · Evidence period: 2024 · Geography: ASEAN Member States
Limitations: Self-reported by the Centre. It counts activity and outputs, such as responders trained and relief deployed, not outcomes: it reports no response times and no count of people the Centre's assistance reached, and its figure of more than 5 million people affected counts people affected by the disasters, not people helped. It is not an independent or comparative evaluation.
- ASEAN Fully Implement e-Form D through the ASEAN Single Window
ASEAN Secretariat · 2024-01-01 · Evidence period: From 1 January 2024 · Geography: ASEAN Member States
Limitations: An announcement of full implementation. It reports no volumes, and establishes nothing about trade growth, clearance times, costs, or which traders can use the system.
- World Employment and Social Outlook 2025: Asia and the Pacific May Update (ILO Brief)
International Labour Organization · 2025-05 · Evidence period: ILO modelled series to 2024; the sentence states no reference year · Geography: Asia and the Pacific, by subregion, including South Asia
Limitations: ILO modelled estimates. The denominator is people in employment, so the figure measures the incidence of informal employment among workers: it is not an unemployment rate, and it says nothing about skill levels or legality. The brief does not list which countries its South Asia figure covers, and ILO's Southern Asia grouping elsewhere includes Iran as well as Afghanistan, so it is not the same set as this region's eight national contexts. Later ILO model vintages may give a different figure. It measures prevalence, not the productivity, protection or firm-size distribution of informal work.
- Raising female employment in South Asia, one step at a time
World Bank, End Poverty in South Asia blog (Laveesh Bhandari and Franziska Ohnsorge) · 2025-02-03 · Evidence period: Not stated in the source · Geography: South Asia (the post does not define which countries the figure covers)
Limitations: A blog post by World Bank economists, first published on the Brookings Future Development blog, not a statistical release. It states no working-age range, reference year or country coverage for the figure, so it is not measurement-compatible with the World Development Indicators participation rates attached elsewhere in this region and must not be combined with them. "Outside the labour force" means neither employed nor seeking work: it is not unemployment, and it does not mean these women do no work, since unpaid and household work is not counted.
- A Livable Future: Protecting Jobs and Growth from Extreme Heat in South Asia's Cities
World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery · 2026-07 · Evidence period: Current losses, with city projections to 2030, 2050 and 2080 under a moderate-emissions scenario · Geography: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka only. Pakistan and Afghanistan are not covered.
Limitations: Covers six of this region's eight national contexts: it does not cover Pakistan or Afghanistan, and nothing in it may be extended to them. The 31 million figure converts working hours lost to heat into full-time job equivalents; it is not a count of jobs destroyed. The report draws that figure from a separate World Bank working paper and does not restate its geographic scope, although the accompanying press release defines South Asia for this report as the six countries. Its projection that GDP could be close to 7 per cent smaller by 2050 comes from an earlier World Bank source, and all future figures are scenario projections.
- Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026: Back to the future
International Labour Organization · 2026-08 · Evidence period: 2025, from ILO modelled estimates (November 2025); 2026 and 2027 are projections · Geography: ILO subregions, not MENA: the Arab States (in ILO's 2024 grouping, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen) and Northern Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia and Western Sahara)
Limitations: ILO modelled estimates for two ILO subregions, not a figure for this movement's geography and not a country rate. The youth unemployment rate is a share of young people in the labour force; the NEET rate is a share of all young people; the two use different denominators and are never added together or converted into each other. The 2026 edition does not restate which countries each subregion contains, so the membership above is ILO's 2024 grouping. Ages 15 to 24 only.
- Renewable Capacity Statistics 2026
International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) · 2026-03 · Evidence period: End of 2024 and end of 2025 · Geography: IRENA's Middle East grouping only: Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the State of Palestine, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. IRENA counts the North African countries under Africa, so this is not a MENA figure.
Limitations: Installed capacity at the end of the year, not the share of electricity generated from renewables, not planned capacity, not investment and not employment. IRENA's Middle East grouping includes Iran and Israel and excludes all of North Africa, so it does not match this movement's geography, and no MENA total is published or constructed here. IRENA's highlights map, updated later, shows 57 GW for the same grouping; the yearbook table value is used here.
- SDG 12: Indicator of global food losses (SDG 12.3.1a)
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) · 2026 (living indicator page, read 2026-09-22) · Evidence period: 2023, compared with 2015 · Geography: The SDG region sub-Saharan Africa (the page does not list its members), and the world
Limitations: Model estimates, and the page notes that small changes fall within expected model oscillation. Food loss is not transport cost and not delay, and it excludes waste at retail and by consumers. It does not show what share of the loss happens in transport, and it is a regional estimate, not a measure of any one value chain or of the food transport case in this region's research.
- World Development Indicators: Electric power consumption (kWh per capita)
World Bank, from IEA energy statistics · 2023 (series values for 2023, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-22) · Evidence period: 2021 to 2023 · Geography: Sub-Saharan Africa, World Bank regional aggregate (weighted average)
Limitations: Power plant output net of transmission, distribution and transformation losses and of plants' own use, divided by mid-year population. It covers all sectors, not households alone, and it is not an access rate, not a measure of reliability and not a measure of productive use by firms.
- World Development Indicators: Firms experiencing electrical outages (% of firms)
World Bank, from World Bank Enterprise Surveys · 2025 (latest aggregate, read from the World Bank data API on 2026-09-22) · Evidence period: Latest available Enterprise Surveys, pooled into a regional aggregate labelled 2025 · Geography: Sub-Saharan Africa, World Bank regional aggregate (unweighted average of countries)
Limitations: The aggregate pools each country's latest Enterprise Survey, so it is not a single year's survey, and the data service does not list which surveys it includes. It measures whether a firm experienced any outage in its last fiscal year, not how often or for how long, and not what outages cost. Enterprise Surveys cover formal firms.
- Informal employment rate by sex: ILO modelled estimates, November 2025
International Labour Organization (ILOSTAT) · 2025-11 · Evidence period: 2023 to 2025 estimates; later years are projections · Geography: ILO's Sub-Saharan Africa grouping
Limitations: ILO modelled estimates, and ILO notes that imputed observations carry high uncertainty. The definition follows the 13th ICLS and includes own-account workers and employers in informal enterprises, own-use producers including subsistence farming, contributing family workers and employees in informal jobs, and it includes agriculture. It is a share of workers, not a measure of informal firms' size, productivity or finance, and it is not the same measure as vulnerable employment.