Although the circumstances in which Kenyan firms must do business have improved since 2004, including an increase in productivity, Kenyan firms still face an adverse business environment. 'An Assessment of the Investment Climate in Kenya' reports on the main impediments to productivity growth identified by managers of Kenyan businesses: -- Lack of access to financing. Despite a favorable lending regime, 90 percent of microenterprises and 60 percent of small firms in Kenya declared that they needed loans, compared to 40 percent of medium-sized and large firms. -- Corruption and crime....

'Working in Health' addresses two key questions related to health workforce policy in developing countries: - What is the impact of government wage bill policies on the size of the health wage bill and on health workforce staffing levels in the public sector? - Do current human resources management policies and practices lead to effective use of wage bill resources in the public sector? Health workers play a key role in increasing access to health services for poor people in developing countries. Global and country level estimates show that staffing levels in many developing...

'HIV and AIDS in South Asia: An Economic Development Risk' offers an original perspective on HIV and AIDS as major development issues for the region. Although the impact of HIV and AIDS on economic growth appears to be very small, three risks to development are associated with HIV and AIDS in South Asia: the risk of escalating concentrated epidemics, the economic welfare costs, and the fiscal costs of scaling up treatment. As the authors show, South Asian countries have relatively low estimated national HIV prevalence rates, but prevalence is growing rapidly among vulnerable groups at high...

Nigeria's Vision 2020 has expressed a bold desire for the country to be among the world's top 20 economies by the year 2020. The economy has posted impressive growth figures since 2003, driven by higher oil revenues and a series of home-grown economic reforms. The country is now firmly on the road to middle-income status. But what else do government and the private sector need to do to create the jobs and growth that will underpin the national development strategy? What are the challenges that Nigeria's businesses face today? 'An Assessment of the Investment Climate in Nigeria' provides...

This book explores policy options for China to implement its strategy of enterprise-led innovation. It identifies two sets of challenges facing China, and recommends actions along four dimensions: pursuing a balanced strategy, creating the right incentives, building capacity of the private sector, and strengthening the ecosystem for the venture capital industry.

Starting in 1994, Cameroon introduced regulatory and market-based reforms to regulate access to its rainforests, balance public and private interests in those forests, and integrate wider economic, cultural, and environmental perspectives of the value of forests. Based on historical data and extensive interviews, this report concludes that the reforms brought order over the most aggressively competing interests and started to address deeper social and environmental issues, but a significant unfinished agenda remains. On the positive side, information on the boundaries, ownership, use rights,...

Reliable information on how health service strategies affect the poor is in short supply. In an attempt to redress the imbalance, 'Improving Health Service Delivery in Developing Countries' presents evidence on strategies for strengthening health service delivery, based on systematic reviews of the literature, quantitative and qualitative analyses of existing data, and seven country case studies. The authors also explore how changes in coverage of different health services affect each other on the national level. Finally, the authors explain why setting international targets for health...

Vanuatu is a traditional and largely patriarchal society; women have extremely low representation in Parliament and in other decision-making bodies. Despite this, women are increasingly involved in private sector development and in the market economy. Yet government support for women's economic empowerment and for businesswomen has been limited, and reforms are needed to the general legal framework to ensure gender equality. This groundbreaking book, 'Women in Vanuatu', brings together data and available evidence on the subject and makes the case for actions needed to ensure gender equality....

La relance de la croissance economique de l'Afrique subsaharienne depuis le debut du millenaire est une evolution encourageante. Maintenir cette croissance de facon durable est a la fois une necessite et un defi de premier ordre. La cle de la reussite economique d'un pays plonge dans la mondialisation repose de plus en plus sur sa capacite a assimiler les connaissances disponibles et a se creer des avantages comparatifs dans certains domaines ayant de bonnes perspectives de croissance. L'importance croissante de l'enseignement superieur et de la recherche dans l'Afrique subsaharienne...

Stronger agricultural growth is needed to reduce poverty in Africa, yet the region continues to fall behind. During the past three decades, many traditional African export crops have lost their competitive advantage in international markets, and many food crops consumed in Africa have faced increased competition from imports. In contrast to Africa's experience, during the same period farmers in two remote and formerly unpromising agricultural regions elsewhere in the developing world Brazil's Cerrado and the Northeast Region of Thailand conquered important world markets, defying the...