Le commerce est essentiel a la croissance economique et la reduction de la pauvrete. En Afrique subsaharienne, ou les trois quarts de la population vit en milieu rural, promouvoir une croissance soutenue generatrice de revenus et d'emplois est d'une importance capitale pour les strategies de reduction de la pauvrete. Or, de nombreuses economies Africaines continuent a dependre lourdement de la production et des exportations de produits agricoles traditionnels (cafe, cacao, coton), dont les prix reels n ont cesse de diminuer au cours des trois dernieres decennies. Ceci a entraine une...

The report, based on a complex analytical methodology, provides a clear economic rationale for investing in improved water resources development and management in Kenya. It is part of the World Bank's policy dialogue on water resources management reforms and investment planning in Kenya. It focuses on the economic implications of two key factors that make the economy and people of Kenya highly vulnerable the effects of climate variability and the steady degradation of the nation's water resources. The 1997-2000 El Nino-La Nina episodes cost the country Ksh 290 billion, about 14 percent of GDP...

This paper provides a comparative analysis of school-based management reforms in four Central American countries (EDUCO in El Salvador, PRONADE in Guatemala, PROHECO in Honduras, and 'Centros Autonomos' in Nicaragua). It starts by providing a characterization of the models and then reviews how they have expanded community participation and empowerment and school decision-making autonomy. It then continues by analyzing the impact of community and school empowerment on the teaching-learning process, including measures of teacher effort. The paper assesses the impact of the models on several...

Relying on contributions from the International Movement ATD Fourth World, this book deals with questions such as: What does it mean to live in poverty, and especially in extreme poverty? How can very poor people be reached through development projects? How can we assess whether projects succeed in changing the lives of the poorest individuals? In answering these questions, the emphasis is on exploring what type of knowledge is needed to fight extreme poverty. A key argument is that apart from academic knowledge, a concerted effort is needed to listen to the knowledge of poor people...

This volume provides a set of six case studies from West Africa. These assess the benefits of growth (or the costs of a lack of growth) in terms of poverty reduction in those countries. The first part of this book describes the experience of two countries (Ghana and Senegal) that achieved high levels of growth in the 1990s, and that also experienced important reductions in poverty, even though growth was not strictly pro-poor. The second part describes the experience of two other countries (Burkina Faso and Cape Verde) that also achieved high levels of growth in the 1990s, but where there was...

The prospect of European integration presents huge opportunities and challenges for the development of non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) in Ukraine. By most measures, the development of the NBFI sector in Ukraine lags far behind that of recent accession countries in Central Europe. To address the main impediments facing the development of the sector, the Ukranian authorities need to implement a strategy based on six main pillars: strengthen the capacity, independence, funding, and accountability of the NBFI regulators; develop money markets, government bond markets, and municipal bond...

In recent years, the power sector in several developing countries has suffered from a frustrating gap between strong, pro-reform rhetoric at the political level, and weak, hesitant implementation of the reform measures on the ground. Focusing on the recent experience of power sector reform in India, this paper looks afresh at the problem of the 'rhetoric-implementation gap' by taking the lack of political will as its starting point, and identifying the ingredients that comprise it in the current context of India. Assuming that people and institutions are not impartial but instead respond to...

Describes how the timely use of two-way communication in large water infrastructure projects leads to improved project design and is key to identify and address problems that could result in project delays and incremental costs.

Cooperative financial institutions (CFIs) are among the poorly understood entities in financial markets. They include diverse member-owned financial intermediaries referred to as credit unions, savings and credit cooperatives, cooperative banks, and other terms that differ across regions of the world. Their institutional structure and governance, legal and regulatory status, and scale and services portfolio also vary widely across regions and especially between industrialized countries and developing economies. A most basic common denominator is that they collect deposits and do business...

This study reviews the recent developments in capital markets and institutional investors in Russia, and examines the policy challenges ahead for the development of the sector. The analysis covers key impediments for further development and policy challenges for securities markets, in particular legal and regulatory framework, market infrastructure, government bonds, sub-sovereign bonds, corporate bonds, and equities. The analysis also covers key impediments for furhter development and policy challenges for mutual funds, pension funds, and insurance companies.