Africa Region Findings & Good Practice Infobriefs

415 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

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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Ghana - Financial Services for Women Entrepreneurs in the Informal Sector

( 1999-06) World Bank

The Ghana Microfinance Institution (MFI) action research network brings together organizations interested in providing financial services to the poor in Ghana. With World Bank support, the network carried out this study which provides brief descriptions of the innovations that informal, semi-formal, and formal MFIs have developed in providing financial services to female entrepreneurs in Ghana. It also makes recommendations on how such services can be strengthened and improved.
Ethiopia - Two Microfinance Delivery Programs

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1999-04) Muntemba, Shimwaayi

Formal financial institutions in Ethiopia have traditionally focused on the accessible urban towns leaving rural areas, where the majority of the population resides, without access to financial services. Recognizing this problem, a number of development agencies such as Redd Barna and World Vision started to provide access to financial services to the poor in rural areas in the 1980s. They undertook income generation programs by forming saving and credit schemes. Credit to the rural poor was provided in the form of grants, and agricultural inputs. Women were the primary targets of these programs. This study summarizes the findings of action research conducted on microfinance institutions in Ethiopia, with focus on the performance of Redd Barna and on Irish Aid-supported program. Action research facilitates the exchange of information on innovations and experiences so that other micro-finance institutions may learn from each other's mistakes and replicate best practices. The extended study on which this article is based addresses their mode of operation, organization, legal framework, as well as the financial and non-financial services they offer. The focus in on one urban and two rural and savings and credit schemes.
Gender, Growth, and Poverty Reduction

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1999-02) Blackden, C. Mark

This note focuses on the core findings, and recommendations of the 1998 status report on poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), prepared for the Special Program for Assistance for Africa (SPA), a thematic examination of the linkages between gender, growth, and poverty reduction in SSA. Primarily focused on agriculture, and the rural sector, the report argues that one of the factors constraining growth, and poverty in SSA is gender inequality in the access to, and control of a diverse range of assets. The note reviews the determinants of growth, and the interdependence of the market, and household economies, where much of women's productive work is unrecorded, (in Kenya, about sixty percent of female activities are unaccounted for, compared with only twenty four percent of male activities). Furthermore, micro-level analyses portray a consistent picture of gender-based asset inequality, pointing at patterns of disadvantage faced by women, in accessing the basic assets, and resources required for a full participation in SSA's growth potential. In education, although girls have made rapid strides in completing primary education, lowering the gender gap, differentials persist due to social, and cultural factors; and, in health, an enormous gender differential in the region's sexual, and reproductive burden of disease, is observed, as measured by deaths, and disability-adjusted life years. Recommendations include women's budget initiatives, sustained investments in education/health, and, raising the visibility of domestic work in national statistics.
Uganda : The Sexually Transmitted Infections Project

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1999-01) Mulusa, Mary

There is evidence suggesting a change in the HIV incidence in Uganda, where its prevalence has dropped in certain communities, and age groups, most notably among women in the 15-29 years age group. The note reviews key features of the Sexually Transmitted Infections Project in the country, identifying change in sexual behavior as the most important approach to preventing HIV spread. The Project also emphasized on mitigation of the personal impact of AIDS, supporting treatment, training of health workers, and provision of drugs, in addition to institutional development, gender issues, and global partnerships. But regardless, of the high level of general awareness of HIV/AIDS, the positive trends observed do not mean that the epidemic has been overcome in Uganda, where current prevalence levels still present an enormous challenge. Lessons address political commitment, and local ownership as essential to overcome the epidemic, highlighting the work of the Namungalwe Women Task Force, whose activities, partly contributed to mitigating the epidemic. Nonetheless, there is the need to mobilize resources to support HIV/AIDS programs, and to use multi-sectoral interventions to deal with the epidemic, as well as capacity building in technical, and management skills, and, information for monitoring programs in a sustainable manner.
Media Dissemination of Road Sector Reforms

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1998-12) Mwale, Sam M.

Over the past five years, the 'second liberalization' of Africa has liberalized the local media in turn. The explosion of media outlets and the diversity of their outreach provide excellent opportunities for the dissemination to, and ownership of development policies, programs, and projects by the stakeholders and beneficiaries. While the practice of participatory development in Africa is relatively new, the practice of using the media as a development tool, especially as a means of facilitating discussion, is even newer. Policymakers view exposing development programs and projects in the public domain via the media with some trepidation. This fear arises, not so much from a fear of public debate, as from the view that 'experts' already know all the answers, in the form of feasibility studies, technical and analytical reports, and participatory rural appraisals.
Climate Change and Sub-Saharan Africa : Issues and Opportunities

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1998-10) Dalfelt, Arne

Largely due to the potential threats to development, and human lives of well known climate changes, the World Bank is getting involved in a range of activities under the subject. The note focuses on climate changes in Africa, and, although it is argued that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from development projects in Africa should be paid minor attention, - because GHG emissions from Africa are negligible on a global scale; industrial countries should be the ones to bear major costs of reducing GHG emissions; and, due to the complex, tentative nature of potential impacts resulting from climate change - these factors do not mean that emissions are irrelevant in the African context. It is anticipated that changes in climate will result in adverse socioeconomic impacts in Africa, related to factors associated with the vulnerability of society, and the sensitivity of the environment. There is high dependency on bio-fuels, and agriculture and forestry, aggravated by restricted population mobility, poor health facilities, high population growth, and low material standards. Whereas concerns of climate change in development projects are prevalent, other factors need further attention: the trans-boundary, and global effects of climate change; cumulative effects of GHG emissions; the complexity in assessing climate change impacts at regional levels; international responsiveness to climate changes, due to the challenging nature of national sector policies, and institutional frameworks; and, the significance of climate change impacts on the socioeconomic environment.
Drought and Sub-Saharan African Economies

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1998-09) Benson, Charlotte ; Clay, Edward

Droughts are frequent and severe in many countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and have a devastating impact on their peoples and economies. The extreme vulnerability to rainfall in the arid and semiarid areas of the continent and the poor capacity of most African soils to retain moisture result in almost 60 percent of SSA being vulnerable to drought and 30 percent being extremely vulnerable. Since the 1960s, rainfall in parts of the Sahel and Southern Africa has also been significantly below the norms of the previous 30 years. Moreover, the prospects of an El Nino effect has led to more focus on the impact of drought in SSA. Against the background of a dearth of investigative studies on drought's economic impact, a recent report, the impact of drought on Sub-Saharan African economies: a preliminary examination examines this phenomenon more closely. Drought has typically been perceived as a problem principally of agriculture and, in particular, food supply. As such, it is seen as posing problems for effective relief but there is less evidence on whether or not it justifies economic responses or modifications in policy. This report presents the findings of an exploratory study which was intended as a contribution to filling that gap. Analysis of a number of issues pulls together lessons learned from six country cases (Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) to develop strategies to reduce the economy-wide impacts of drought.
Togo - Coffee and Cocoa Liberalization

(Washington, DC, 1998-06) World Bank

The reform, a key component of a larger economic recovery and adjustment operation, and of the agricultural sector strategy, focused on the liberalization of coffee and cocoa prices, their primary marketing and export, all previously regulated by a marketing board. The main objectives of the liberalization were to improve producers' incentives and income and develop private participation in marketing and export activities while maintaining the country's reputation in international markets as a reliable supplier of quality products. The liberalization took effect in June 1996. Coffee and cocoa exports reached a record high in 1997 - more than double the 1996 level.
TechnoServe in Ghana

(Washington, DC, 1998-05) World Bank

TechnoServe (TNS) is an international non-governmental organization founded in 1968 and has programs in 14 countries in Africa, Latin America and Central Europe. The Ghana program was established in 1971. TechnoServe's mission is to establish sustainable community-based enterprises that increase productivity, income and employment. It opposes food relief, subsidized inputs and grants and promotes self-help and technical assistance to rural communities. This approach involves the provision of financial and business management training in order to help these communities make sound business decisions and create and operate their own enterprises. Although TNS believed that the key to financing these small community-based enterprises was savings, eventually it became convinced that credit was also necessary. TNS therefore evolved its own financial mediation strategy by developing innovative mechanisms for micro-enterprise financing.
Nutritional Status and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1998-04) Sahn, David E. ; Alderman, H.

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has had an aggregate malnutrition rate of nearly 30 percent for the last decade. While malnutrition prevalence has decreased significantly in most other developing countries in the last decade, it has been nearly static for SSA. This static trend in the percentage of malnourished children, however, does not fully reflect the rapidly rising numbers of malnourished children given SSA's high population growth rate. The LSMS/ISs, or (Living Standards Measurement Survey/ Integrated Survey) and PSs (Priority Survey) over the last decade provide for the first time data to undertake a more comprehensive analysis of the factors that could affect malnutrition in selected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Based on LSMS data, determinants of malnutrition are investigated for Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana. Both studies find that household expenditure plays an important role in improving the preschool-age children's long-term nutritional indicator status (height-for-age), but not the short-term nutritional indicator status (weight-for-height). Nutritional studies have found that linear (height-for-age) growth and ponderal (weight-for-height) growth have different nutritional requirements. Just as overall dietary inadequacy (also called protein-energy malnutrition) causes stunting, so does deficiency in any of a large number of micronutrients. Micronutrients are concentrated in specific foods and are low or absent in staple grains and legumes. Since the specific foods are often more expensive than staples, stunting and wasting may be affected differently by income. The purpose here is to review the evidence for this proposition using available data from SSA countries.