Africa Region Findings & Good Practice Infobriefs

415 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

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

Items in this collection

Now showing 1 - 10 of 27
  • Publication
    Uganda’s Virtual Poverty Fund : Pro-Poor Spending Reform
    (2008-03) Sudharshan Canagarajah; Tim Williamson
    The provision of debt relief to Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPCs) commencing in the late 1990s, and the growing interest among donors in providing direct budget support, increased donor focus on national budget systems. Given that debt relief and aid resources are fungible, donors were concerned that such debt relief be verifiably used to benefit the poor in the recipient country. In effect, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), acting on behalf of donors, asked that HIPC governments put in place systems to track the use of resources freed up by debt relief and show that these were in fact used to finance pro-poor programs. This required governments to have the capacity to identify policies and programs that would benefit the poor and to effectively channel and track resources to such programs. This note considers the Uganda Virtual Poverty Fund (VPF) to understand how well it served to allocate resources to pro-poor programs and what weaknesses were observed that may need to be corrected as other countries employ mechanisms similar to the VPF.
  • Publication
    Multi-Dimensional Results Measurement in CDD Projects : Experiences from the Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda Social Action Funds
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-12) Pidatala, Krishna; Lenneiye, Nginya Mungai
    In the last decade, Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda have used the Community-Driven Development (CDD) approach to implement projects that exhibit multi-sectoral linkages, complex institutional structures and implementation processes, creative tension between the supply and demand sides, and convergence at the Local Government Authority (LGA) level in environments compounded by the pace of decentralization. The projects have broadened the issue of results focus from the measurement of a few input-output indicators to include intermediate outcomes (which measure beneficiaries potentially reached by outputs produced by the projects). In the process, these projects have been able to scale up from 'isolated boutique-type projects' to a mass production of outputs through participatory decision-making, local capacity development, and community control of resources. At the national level, the projects have contributed to: (a) poverty reduction, (b) improved social welfare, and (c) improved transparency and accountability.
  • Publication
    Restructuring Uganda’s Coffee Industry : Why Going Back to the Basics Matters
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-03) Baffes, John
    Uganda's coffee industry consists of low input-intensity smallholders with an average farm size of 0.2 hectares and is the main source of income for an estimated 500,000 households. Following its introduction earlier in the 20th century, the industry expanded considerably during the 1950s and 1960s. However, the sector experienced a huge setback due to the civil strife of the 1970s, when output halved within a 5-year period (1972-77). During the late 1980s, the sector went through a liberalization process, which, coupled with high world prices, led to considerable supply response, with exports exceeding 4 million bags in two consecutive years (1995 and 1996), the only time in the sector's history. By all accounts, the reforms have been successful. Producers' share of export prices doubled and growers receive payments promptly. Entrepreneurial activity has increased enormously. Most important, there has been a well documented poverty reduction impact on households of the coffee growing regions. There has been no backtracking of reforms.
  • Publication
    The Northern Uganda Social Action Fund : Community Reconciliation and Conflict Management Empower Communities in a Post-Conflict Setting
    (Washington, DC, 2006-12) World Bank
    The five year Northern Uganda Social Action Fund (NUSAF), being implemented since 2003 is meant to assist government in its efforts to tackle poverty and bring about development that utilizes and builds on community value systems As part of the broader efforts to reconstruct Northern Uganda, NUSAF, as a project, and through direct grants to communities, is intended to: overcome underdevelopment through community action, leadership development, resource mobilization, strengthening the ongoing reconciliation processes in the region, and make it possible for communities to articulate and prioritize their specific needs and manage processes and outcomes, there by enhancing good governance for peace and development.
  • Publication
    Uganda : Local Government Development Program
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-07) Mohan, P. C.
    The Uganda Local Government Development Program, with a credit equivalent to US$80.9 million, was implemented by the government over the period 2000-2004. The project was designed to scale up an earlier UN Capital Development Fund pilot to 30 districts (out of 56) so that policies and principles could be tested (and costed) on a larger scale and lessons learned used to develop national policy formulation within a sound fiscal framework. It had 4 objectives : (1) Test the feasibility of implementing constitutional and legal mandates with respect to decentralized service provision and devolution of the development budget through the provision of investment funds to the Local Governments; (2) Build the capacity of the Ministry of Local Government, the Local Government Finance Commission Secretariat, and a sub-set of the local governments for improved service delivery, accountability and transparency; (3) Test and institute alternative service delivery mechanisms through the private sector, beneficiary communities and other stakeholders in the Kampala City Council; (4) Monitor and evaluate project implementation for actual experience and good practices for formulating an appropriate strategy, implementation modalities, and phasing for eventual scaling-up, nationally, over time.
  • Publication
    Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) - Lessons from Uganda’s Integrated Fiduciary Assessment Process
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-10) Canagarajah, Sudharshan
    The 2004 Country Integrated Fiduciary Assessment (CIFA) in Uganda was the first exercise by key development partners, and the government to adopt an integrated, and holistic approach to the assessment of Public Financial Management (PFM), along the lines of the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) Program. The overall CIFA process in Uganda took place over a period of nine months, with each individual assessment being conducted over a period of two to three months, and the PER process being carried out during the entire financial year. The CIFA has benefited from strong coordination between the various government-donor diagnostic processes, and the lengthy consultations with key stakeholders throughout the process. The inclusion of a specific local government component has been of considerable value, especially in the decentralized service delivery environment prevailing in Uganda. The CIFA exercise highlighted both the commonalities and the differences between the different levels of government. In retrospect, a more in-depth analysis at the local government level would have provided a clearer understanding of the causes of the problems rather than merely the symptoms.
  • Publication
    Public-Private Sector Dialogue in Uganda’s Reform Process
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-08) Kalema, William
    The note describes Uganda's impressive track record as a fast reformer, which has been well documented and widely acclaimed. The country recorded robust economic growth averaging 6.8 percent in the period 1990-2003, thanks to political stability, and prudent macro economic reforms that have imposed fiscal discipline, restructured public expenditure, and liberalized the economy. The reforms were implemented following a period of civil conflict (the 1970s and early 1980s) that saw Uganda's economy spiral out of control. Today, Uganda has one of the better investment climates, and the most liberal trade regime in the region. Much still remains to be done, but there is a commitment to lowering investment risks, and reducing the costs of doing business, by implementing efficiency-enhancing reforms, strengthening key institutions, and providing better physical infrastructure. The note further reviews public-private partnerships, private sector consultation, and other parallel, but no less important, initiatives which have positively, impacted the quality of Uganda's public private dialogue.
  • Publication
    Uganda - Small Towns Water and Sanitation
    (2005-06) Mohan, P.C.
    The specific objectives of this project (Credit of US$42.3 million over the period 1995-2003) were to: (a) improve health conditions through better water supply, excreta disposal, waste management and public hygiene; (b) alleviate poverty and improve the lot of women; and (c) reduce environmental degradation through better waste management. The project was to provide improved and sustainable water supply and sanitation services in two groups of towns: (a) the 11 small towns ( Busia, Kalisizo, Kyotera, Lugazi, Luwero, Lyantonde, Malaba, Ntungamo, Rakai, Rukunguri and Wobulenzi ), where most of the town populations drew water from boreholes with hand pumps, springs and traditional sources such as rivers and lakes - this was to be implemented by the Directorate of Water Development ( DWD ); and (b) the rehabilitation of the water sewerage services in Jinja, to be expanded to include Njeru.- to be implemented by the National Water and Sewerage Corporation ( NWSC ).
  • Publication
    Uganda - Integrating Gender into Policy Actions
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-04) Canagarajah, Roy S.
    The findings of both macro- and microeconomic analysis of the links between growth and gender inequality have shown that large gender disparities in basic human rights, resources, economic opportunity, and in political voice is directly and indirectly limiting growth in sub-Saharan Africa, and that women and girls are bearing the largest and most direct costs of these inequalities.
  • Publication
    Uganda’s Nutrition and Early Child Development Project - Counting on Communication
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-04) Cabanero-Verzosa, Cecilia
    In 1998, a $34 million World Bank loan for the Nutrition and Early Child Development Project (NECDP) was approved to support the National Program of Action for Children. The NECDP covered about 8,000 communities in 20 of Uganda's 39 districts, selected based on levels of malnutrition, infant mortality, and primary school enrollment rates. The project sought to halve malnutrition among preschool children, raise primary school enrollment, reduce dropout and repetition rates, improve psycho-social and cognitive development, and increase the number of mothers practicing appropriate childcare.