The African Development Bank is much more than a source of funding for projects in Africa. It is also a knowledge institution and statistics are one of its important products. To that end, the Bank recently published three documents that are valuable sources of information for policymakers, civil servants, foreign aid donors, students, academics, international organizations, think-tanks or anyone in need of an economic fact or two about Africa. What's more, all three are available free of charge.

The Compendium of Statistics on Bank Group Operations 2014 tells a substantial part of the story of the AfDB through numbers. How many projects were approved and how much money was repaid in 2014? How much has the Bank lent to each of its members? Which member borrowed the most and which borrowed the least since 1967? Plenty of questions find their answers on these pages.

The 15th edition of Gender, Poverty, and Environmental Indicators on African Countries weighs in at more than 300 pages to give readers a close look at: the risks and opportunities Africa faces regarding green growth and poverty alleviation; comparative cross-country data on Millennium Development Goals, gender, poverty and the environment; and detailed, country-specific data for each of Africa's 54 states.

At 170 pages in English and French, AfDB Statistics Pocketbook 2014 is full of easily accessible charts and figures covering prices and money, national accounts, infrastructure, export volumes, data about AfDB Group operations and more. So if you need to know the number of telephone subscribers per 1,000 inhabitants in Angola, the external debt of Madagascar, or the adult literacy rate in Zimbabwe, this just may be the booklet for you.