Other Infrastructure Study

341 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2204

Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa, home to more than 1 billion people, half of whom will be under 25 years old by 2050, is a diverse ...

Overview >

Items in this collection

Now showing 1 - 10 of 11

Managing Water for Sustainable Growth and Poverty Reduction : A Country Water Resources Assistance Strategy for Zambia

(World Bank, 2009-08-01) World Bank

The country water resources assistance strategy for Zambia provides an analysis of the role of water in the economy and identifies the specific challenges, development opportunities and policies which inform an agreed framework for priority areas of assistance. Zambia lies entirely within the catchments of the Zambezi and Congo rivers and all internal runoff is shared by downstream and parallel riparian countries. This strategic geographic position in the upper reaches of both these catchments provides an important context for any water resources development. Zambia has played an important role in development of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) revised protocol on shared water courses (2000) and is engaged in the process of developing co-operative mechanisms with riparian states. However, the existing legal framework explicitly excludes any provisions for addressing issues on shared waters in the Zambezi and Luapula rivers, along with that portion of the Luangwa River which constitutes the boundary between Zambia and Mozambique. These account for more than 60 percent of Zambia's water resources. Economic development is undermined by physical scarcity of water. Despite the relative abundance, the uneven distribution of water resources across the country, high climatic variability (resulting in frequent floods and droughts) and degradation of water quality increasingly results in localized issues of scarcity. Despite continuing efforts to reduce pollution flow into the Kafue River, severe water quality issues persist in the Copper belt, posing serious health risks to the population and limiting the availability of water for productive purposes. The high dependency on hydropower, with 96 percent of the installed capacity produced within a 300km radius in the Kafue/Zambezi complex, will further increase vulnerability of the national economy to impacts associated with changing climatic conditions.
Zimbabwe Infrastructure Dialogue in Roads, Railways, Water, Energy, and Telecommunication Sub-Sectors

(Washington, DC, 2008-06) World Bank

In the 1990s, Zimbabwe's economic growth began to slow following a balance of payments crisis and repeated droughts. By the late 1990s Zimbabwe's economy was in serious trouble driven by economic mismanagement, political violence, and the wider impact of the land reform program on food production. During 2007 Gross Domestic Product (GDP) contract by more than 6 percent, making the cumulative output decline over 35 percent since 1999. The unrelenting economic deterioration is doing long-term damage to the foundations of the Zimbabwean economy, private sector investment is virtually zero, infrastructure has deteriorated, and skilled professionals have left the country. With inflation accelerating, the Government introduced, in 2007, blanket price controls and ordered businesses to cut prices by half. Despite the strict price controls inflation continues to rise as the root cause of high inflation, monetization of the large public sector financing needs remains unaddressed. A large part of the high public sector deficit is due to quasi-fiscal spending by the central bank on mainly concessional credits and subsidized foreign exchange for priority sectors, unrealized exchange rate losses, and losses incurred by the central bank's open market operations to mop up liquidities.
United Republic of Tanzania: Water Resources Assistance Strategy

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-02) World Bank

In the past decade, Tanzania has experienced high economic growth and it is in the global limelight as a recent success story in Africa. A variety of factors have contributed to this success, including liberalized policies and reforms, infusion of external capital from development partners and the private sector, debt cancellation, and a strong performance by emerging sectors such as mining, tourism, and fisheries. Its social policies, largely influenced by the First President Julius Kambarage Nyerere, including a single national language and relative political stability have contributed to a strong sense of nationhood, which sets it apart from many of its neighbors and has provided an unusual degree of stability that has facilitated major economic transformation without a significant social backlash.
Ethiopia : Managing Water Resources to Maximize Sustainable Growth

(Washington, DC, 2006) World Bank

This report looks at, and beyond, the management hydrological variability to interventions aimed at decreasing the vulnerability of the economy to these shocks. It helps clarify linkages between the country's economic performance and its water resources endowment and management. It then uses this analysis to recommend both water resource strategies and economic and sectoral policies that will enhance growth and insulate the Ethiopian people and economy from the often devastating, economy-wide effects of water shocks. This report finds that unmitigated hydrological variability currently costs the economy over one third of its growth potential. The very structure of the Ethiopian economy with its heavy reliance on rainfed subsistence agriculture makes it particularly vulnerable to hydrological variability. Its current extremely low levels of hydraulic infrastructure and limited water resources management capacity undermine attempts to manage variability. These circumstances leave Ethiopia's economic performance virtually hostage to its hydrology.
Islamic Republic of Mauritania : Transport Sector Overview

(Washington, DC, 2004-09-29) World Bank

The main Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) objectives for general transport policy are: a) lower costs, and ensure safe transport for passengers and goods; b) foster consistent national planning through multi-modal links between the country's major development centers; c) promote national integration, and linkages with the global economy; and, e) involve more private capital in financing the sector. The PRSP also includes specific objectives for transport modes, which are taken into account in this Economic and Sector Work (ESW). The purpose of this ESW is to provide a framework to help the Government analyze transport sector issues, and develop a transport sector strategy for the 2004-2009 period, and, identify issues and challenges that can be addressed through donor funded operations. This ESW focuses on road, air, and maritime transport, and analyzes strategic, and cross-cutting issues important to the sector as a whole. Recommendations include: corrections to the imbalance between investment and maintenance; improvement of the road maintenance financing mechanism; pursuit of a road investment program; strengthening the road management system; updating regulations to ensure effective liberalization of transport services; revision of the fiscal policy for the sector; improvement of the balance between supply and demand; and, identifying a mechanism for supporting the trucking industry.
Mali : Transport Support to Sustainable Economic Growth

(Washington, DC, 2004-06-25) World Bank

This Economic and Sector Work (ESW) is consistent with the objectives laid out for the transport sector in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), and the Country Assistance Strategy (CAS), with its two primary objectives focused on strengthening existing reforms, and, helping define a forthcoming reform program. The proposed transport sector strategy relies on three pillars to: 1) promote sustainable development of transport infrastructure, ensuring adequate allocation of financial, and human resources to infrastructure maintenance; 2) increase transport sector efficiency, through sound market, and fiscal policies that support the rapid modernization of Mali's transport companies; and, 3) support cross sectoral initiatives, primarily in the areas of economic competitiveness, road safety, rural poverty alleviation, and in addition, to support HIV/AIDS prevention, and health services accessibility. Since transport costs represent a significant share of the imported costs of intermediary goods used in building up Mali's export capacity, their reduction should have a positive impact on Mali's economic competitiveness. Accordingly, the already completed privatization of the railway, the current attempt at privatizing the airport system, as well as the proposed measures to increase the productivity of Mali's truck transport, should all support economic competitiveness. The Government however, should foresee that adequate regulatory oversight is in place, to ensure that these productivity gains are passed on to transport customers. Regarding road safety in Mali, it is not only a financial dimension, but also a health dimension, since it tends to challenge an already stretched health service. This would entail training law enforcement agents, towards creating a nationwide road accident database. It is stressed that the development of a rural road maintenance, and construction strategy by no later than the end of 2004, be conducted, with part of this strategy's investment priorities defined, based on poverty reduction criteria, such as increased accessibility to health care, linkage to local markets, and other potential accessible services. The report emphasizes it is now an established fact, that transport activities are an important vector to HIV/AIDS dissemination, where activities within the transport sector, designed to educate transport operators about the disease, and its mode of transmission would, contribute to the overall fight against the spread of the epidemic.
Transport Strategy to Improve Accessibility in Developing Countries

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2004-05-01) Roberts, Peter ; Babinard, Julie

In developing countries disabled people and the elderly are more likely to be among the poor. Moreover, exclusion increases the costs associated with disability to constrain disabled people from breaking out of poverty. Improved access and mobility are important factors in reducing poverty and can facilitate the participation of people with disabilities in economic, social, and political processes. Many countries have legislation requiring that these challenges be addressed but effective responses are generally very limited. Action to improve the situation is constrained by the serious shortage of data on the access and mobility needs of disabled and elderly people as well as by resource constraints. This paper outlines guidance for addressing the access and mobility needs of disabled and elderly people in the context of the World Bank's mission to reduce poverty and discusses the main challenges for providing inclusive transport. It draws attention to opportunities to learn from transport interventions and to current research. The paper describes the main activities being fostered by the transport sector in the World Bank. These aim to raise awareness of proven good practice in setting policies and strategies.
Towards a Water-Secure Kenya : Water Resources Sector Memorandum

(Washington, DC, 2004-04) World Bank

The main objective of the Water Resources Sector Memorandum (WRSM) is to capture the emerging water resources management priorities and to propose a plan of action that will put water resources management on a sound footing in Kenya. It will also guide the engagement of development partners who are formulating programs for supporting reforms and investments in water resources management and development. The WRSM provides an economic rationale for extending the water resources reforms being undertaken by the Government of Kenya and highlights the need to broaden the ownership of the reforms to include other sectoral ministries, NGOs, the private sector, and community groups. It broadens and complements the analyses of water issues in the Country Economic Memorandum (CEM) and will inform the Country Assistance Strategy (CAS).
Kenya : Transport Sector Memorandum, Volume 3. Annexes

(Washington, DC, 2003-01-31) World Bank

This Memorandum is intended to initiate discussion regarding the appropriate infrastructure strategy and policy direction which will lead to a sustainable transport sector which provides access for people and goods within Kenya and integrates Kenya into the global economy. Unless these two objectives are achieved, the prospects for substantial and continuing social and economic development in Kenya are limired. Large segments of Kenya's population will remain isolated in the rural areas, and the economy will continue as a producer of primary commodities and basic manufactues for domestic and perhaps regional consumption. The report states as the first and most important action to reverse the deterioration in the transport sector, a very major change in the philosophic approach of politicians to the sector is needed. They have to start to treat infrastructure as integral to the economic rather than the political process. Beyond this overarching change in approach, the following should also be considered as needed steps for implementing the strategy: increase private sector investment and management in the ports, airports, railways, and roads systems; reduce the role of the public sector in day-to-day management while retaining core functions for all modes of transportation and increasing public funding; and in terms of financing, rely on performance contracting under either maintenance concessions or long-term performance-based contracts.
Kenya : Transport Sector Memorandum, Volume 1. Strategy

(Washington, DC, 2003-01) World Bank

This Memorandum is intended to initiate discussion regarding the appropriate infrastructure strategy and policy direction which will lead to a sustainable transport sector which provides access for people and goods within Kenya and integrates Kenya into the global economy. Unless these two objectives are achieved, the prospects for substantial and continuing social and economic development in Kenya are limired. Large segments of Kenya's population will remain isolated in the rural areas, and the economy will continue as a producer of primary commodities and basic manufactues for domestic and perhaps regional consumption. The report states as the first and most important action to reverse the deterioration in the transport sector, a very major change in the philosophic approach of politicians to the sector is needed. They have to start to treat infrastructure as integral to the economic rather than the political process. Beyond this overarching change in approach, the following should also be considered as needed steps for implementing the strategy: increase private sector investment and management in the ports, airports, railways, and roads systems; reduce the role of the public sector in day-to-day management while retaining core functions for all modes of transportation and increasing public funding; and in terms of financing, rely on performance contracting under either maintenance concessions or long-term performance-based contracts.