Africa Region Findings & Good Practice Infobriefs

415 items available

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http://hdl.handle.net/10986/9389

These briefs report on ongoing operational, economic, and sector work carried out by the World Bank and its member governments in the Africa Region.

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Cameroon - The National Agricultural Extension and Research Program Support Project

(Washington, DC, 2006-12) World Bank

The National Agricultural Extension and Research Program Support Project of Cameroon undertook to finance - jointly with the government, IFAD, and AfDB - implementation (2001-2004) of the national agricultural extension policy and agricultural research in Cameroon as follows : competitive research grants (IDA); linkages between agricultural research and extension (IFAD); and on-station agricultural research ( AfDB). While providing services to all farmers, the project sought to prioritize resource-poor farmers, and women farmers. This project was a follow-on intervention to the National Project for Agricultural Extension (PNVA).
Ghana : The Village Infrastructure Project

(Washington, DC, 2006-09) World Bank

The project, with an IDA credit of US$30 million, and a total of $60 million was implemented by the government between 1998 and 2004. It was jointly financed by KFW $7m; IFAD, $10; GoG $7.1m; District Assemblies $3.0m and beneficiaries $2.9m. Its main objective was to support the government's efforts to reduce poverty and enhance the quality of life of the rural poor through the increased transfer of technical and financial resources for the development of basic village-level infrastructure that could be maintained by the beneficiaries. It also supported the capacity building of District Assemblies to better plan and manage these investments. The project had 4 components: (i) Rural water infrastructure; (ii) Rural transport infrastructure; (iii) Rural post-harvest infrastructure; and (iv) Institutional strengthening.
Senegal - Sustainable and Participatory Energy

(Washington, DC, 2006-03) World Bank

The Sustainable and Participatory Energy Management project - PROGEDE was implemented by the government between 1997 and 2004. From project preparation to supervision the World Bank worked in close collaboration with Dutch Co-operation (DGIS). At the time of project preparation, forest-based traditional fuels (firewood and charcoal), mainly used for household cooking purposes, represented 53 percent of Senegal's final energy consumption, and 76 percent of charcoal consumption was in the principal urban areas. Over the years, the operation of the charcoal industry had resulted in (i) the gradual loss of forest cover (approximately 30,000 ha per year) and thus of the ecosystem's carbon sequestration capacity and biodiversity; (ii) the degradation of the rural environment (particularly soils); (iii) the impoverishment of the rural areas; (iv) an acceleration of rural exodus; and (v) a massive transfer of wealth from the rural communities to a few urban-based woodfuel traders.
Strengthening Oversight by Legislatures

(Washington, DC, 2003-09) World Bank

About 90 percent of the world's nearly 200 sovereign states have national legislatures or parliaments. With the spread of democracy and the rise of multiparty political systems, these bodies are playing larger roles in government. Increasingly, legislatures and their members perform four important functions of governance: Making policies and laws. Legislatures are representative bodies for collective decision-making, working with the executive branch to deliberate policies and make laws. Representing citizens. Legislators give voice to individual citizens, civil society organizations, and business groups, representing the needs of local constituents in policymaking. Overseeing the executive. Legislatures oversee policy implementation by the executive branch, scrutinizing its work and holding it accountable. Recruiting future leaders. Legislatures are stepping stones and training grounds for senior positions in the executive branch.
Uganda : Policy, Participation, People

(Washington, DC, 2002-08) World Bank

When the government of President Museveni assumed power in Uganda in 1986, it took over a shattered postwar economy. Market-oriented reforms led to a remarkable recovery. International Development Association (IDA) operations in Uganda initially tackled economic recovery, rehabilitation, and stabilization, then turned slowly to institutional and private sector development as the country stabilized. Since 1995, IDA has focused on poverty reduction and social progress. An OED (Operations Evaluation Department) assessment of IDA assistance to Uganda during 1987-99 found that IDA has excelled at policy dialogue, economic and sector work (ESW), and fostering participatory processes; had signal success in mobilizing resources and debt relief; and broadened the stakeholder dialogue on aid coordination. There is room for improvement, however, in some aspects of project implementation. The Bank and other donors were involved on a very high plane in Uganda, and important successes were achieved, partly because of the government's strong political leadership, its eagerness to learn from experience, its good use of technical assistance in core government agencies, and its recognition of the need to deepen its commitment and broaden the ownership of reform.
Sub-Saharan Africa : Strengthening Community Participation

(Washington, DC, 2000-02) World Bank

About two years ago, an effort was launched to try and harmonize the World Bank's considerable experience with community participation in a number of African countries. This effort was initiated by a group of organizations including the Benin National Research Institute, the Benin National Extension Service, the Royal Institute for the Tropics, and the World Bank. Very quickly, this group of organizations was expanded to include a variety of research, extension and other rural development organizations in about ten countries, with active support from bi, and multilaterals such as Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ, and others. The goal of the effort was to make community participation truly multi-sectoral and to use the approach to cover entire countries over a relatively short period of time.
Chad - The Safe Motherhood Project : Strengthening the Health System

(Washington, DC, 2000-01) World Bank

In this largely Muslim population, only about a third of women have any schooling, most marry young (nearly 80 percent by the age of 19) and by the age of 18, more than half have had their first child. Nearly 1 in every 5 women joins in a polygamous marriage. As both women and men state they want 8 and 16 children, respectively, the use of modern contraception remains strikingly low at 1 percent among women and fertility is high. The objectives of this project are to: (a) enhance capability at the central level to support regional health services (16 percent); (b) ensure accessibility of the population to low-cost essential drugs (21 percent); and (c) improve access to basic health services in the regions of Guera and Tandjile (63 percent). While the scope of (a) and (b) are nationwide and support capacity building for health generally, (c) targets two regions for the implementation of these efforts with an emphasis on Safe Motherhood. This project builds on a prior Bank project that included support for the general health sector, the Social Development Action Project (PADS). To further support the nationwide health efforts, and specifically the newly-adopted National Drug Policy (NDP), the Bank assists to ensure overall geographical as well as financial accessibility of the population to essential generic drugs as a prerequisite to the successful implementation of cost-recovery. The NDP selects drugs essential for dealing effectively with at least 90 percent of the curative and prophylactic needs of the majority of the population, including the major complications that kill women.
Uganda’s Integrated Information Management System : A New Approach in Statistical Capacity-Building

(Washington, DC, 1999-09) World Bank

Uganda is embarking on a major program to upgrade its statistical systems. As with many African countries, the quality of national statistics and the timeliness with which they are produced have been issues of considerable concern for a number of years. It has suffered from problems common to many national statistical offices, including: high staff turnover, inadequate funding, lack of timeliness in delivering outputs, unevenness in quality of data produced and inability to respond quickly to new data needs. The starting point for reform has been to persuade government and donors to commit more resources to essential statistical activities. This led to the establishment in 1999 of a new semi-autonomous Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) and to the development of a draft UBOS Corporate Action Plan. The World Bank will be channeling its support through the Second Economic and Financial Management Project (EFMPII). The main goal of the program is to support the building of national capacity to collect, process, store and disseminate statistical information for the purpose of monitoring and evaluating outcomes and outputs of development policies and programs at both national and district levels.
Financing Higher Education in Africa : Makerere - The Quiet Revolution

(Washington, DC, 1999-09) World Bank

One of the standing conundrums of educational policy in Africa in the last fifteen years has been how to provide good quality higher education to large numbers, equitably but without undue dependence on public resources. Now, from Makerere University in Uganda, comes an instructive demonstration of new possibilities for solving this conundrum. In the past seven years, Makerere has reversed the plant decay and capacity loss of the 1970s and 1980s, and moved from the brink of collapse to a point where it can again aspire to become the pre-eminent intellectual and capacity building resource in Uganda and the wider region. It has more than doubled student enrolment, instigated major improvements in the physical and academic infrastructure and drastically reduced its traditional financial dependence upon the state. This has been achieved despite declining financial support from government but in a national context of economic growth and political stability. The contribution of the World Bank has been a set of programs supporting the macro-economic and governmental reforms which have reinforced the context of institutional change.
Ethiopia - The Gilgel Gibe Resettlement Project

(Washington, DC, 1999-08) World Bank

The development plan of the Federal Government of Ethiopia emphasized low-cost energy supply as a prerequisite to the enhancement of industrial and economic development for the period 1984-1993. Current power planning studies have estimated Ethiopia's hydropower potential at 30,000 MW, which greatly exceeds foreseeable domestic demands. Presently, only 1 percent of the potential is utilized. The government has therefore initiated the implementation of the Gilgel Gibe hydroelectric power plant to enhance industrial development and increase its national income through export sales of surplus energy to neighboring countries. The World Bank-assisted Ethiopia Second Energy, projected to end in the year 2000 will help to realize this objective. The Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCO) will implement the construction of the power plant, whose reservoir will cover an area of 6200 ha, necessitating land acquisition and involuntary resettlement. An environmental assessment (EA) including a social assessment was carried out and a resettlement action plan (RAP) designed to address the adverse social impacts presumed to be linked to the building of the reservoir. The reservoir as well as the resettlement site are located in the Oromia Region under the Jima zone administration. The host population and the resettled population are both Oromo and of Moslem faith. The main economic activity of the population is agriculture and animal husbandry.