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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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.
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.
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.
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.
Learning by Doing : Uganda’s AIDS Control Project Empowers Local Managers

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2004-11) Valadez, Joseph J. ; Nsubuga, Peter

Surveillance systems in Uganda detect that HIV prevalence declined from 21.1 percent in 1991 to 6.4 percent in 2001. The most common explanations for this decrease are that the population mobilized itself with the consequence that more people were faithful to their partners, or abstained from sexual contact, and used condoms during sexual intercourse (Low-Beer et al 2003). Although one might debate which of these behavior changes contributed most to the apparent reduction in HIV prevalence, no one would claim that Uganda can now become complacent about its HIV/AIDS programs. Quite the contrary. National HIV/AIDS Committees continue to have the responsibility for both covering their populations with the highest quality prevention, care, support, and treatment programs possible, and to improve them constantly.
Monitoring and Evaluation for Results : Lessons from Uganda

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2004-09) Hauge, Arild O. ; Mackay, Keith

Recent experience with monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in Uganda has shown how M&E can be developed to contribute to national capacity building, rather than become a demanding, but unproductive data collection exercise. Symptoms of M&E overload have been addressed by assigning coordination responsibility to the Office of the Prime Minister. Prospects are now improving for aligning M&E capacity with strengthening cost-effectiveness and achievement of value for money in service delivery.
East Africa-South Asia : Learning and Exchanging Indigenous Knowledge

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-03) Mohan, P.C.

The Africa Region's Indigenous Knowledge for Development Program promotes client/staff action learning through cross regional exchanges to learn about the impact of Indigenous Knowledge (IK) systems in development. The first such exchange and learning tour was organized in September-October 2002 between three East African countries (Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda) and two South Asian countries (Sri Lanka and India). The exchange involved several innovative features which are highlighted here. The learning exchange included 16 development practitioners from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda (i.e., project staff from Bank-supported projects in early childhood development and medicinal plant projects, civil society representatives, a traditional healer, a parliamentarian and a minister) accompanied by 5 Bank staff working on these projects. The group visited counterparts in Sri Lanka and India, including projects using informatics for social sector development.
Skills and Literacy Training for Better Livelihoods : A Review of Approaches and Experiences

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2002-06) Oxenham, John

Too often, policy for vocational education in developing countries has only concerned itself with a literate minority within the labor force. This study helps to widen that view. From the perspective of " Education for All " and " Lifelong Education, " the report examines efforts to combine vocational training with literacy education, to enable a very poor, illiterate labor force, especially rural women, to develop more productive livelihoods and take on increasingly active roles in transforming their families and communities. The aim is to assess whether and how official policy should support such efforts. Based on documentary evidence from several countries, particularly Guinea, Kenya, Senegal, and Uganda, the report suggests that vocational education policy should encompass out-of-school, and illiterate youth and adults, but to be effective would require gradualism, decentralization, capacity building, flexibility, and components of savings, credit, and enterprise development.
Educating Adults in Uganda : Findings and Signals

( 2002-01) Oxenham, John

The note summarizes a 1999 evaluation of adult literacy programs in Uganda, which looked at the longer-term outcomes of these programs. Four main questions were addressed: How well do adult literacy students remember how to read, write, and calculate? To what extent do they use their skills? Compared with non-literates, what knowledge of "functional" topics do they exhibit, and to what extent do they practice what was learnt? Which are the most effective approaches to literacy teaching, and what are the comparative costs? Some questions were left open, such as the treatment of literacy instructors, which engenders uncertainty towards policy formation, and, the balance to be sought between general, national curriculum, and an array of curricula tailored to suit different interest groups. Evident signals seemed to confirm the importance of reliable delivery of sound instruction, rather than methods, and materials, and, as for policy, the strong signal is that frameworks to encourage active, complementary partnerships between governments, and agencies, would best serve the people who could benefit from adult basic education. Thus, there is an impending need to develop ways of combining basic education in a vernacular introduction, to an official language.
Empowering Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa : Best Practices

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1995-02) Beaudoux, Elaine ; Bourque, Andre ; Collion, Marie-Helene ; Delion, Jean ; Gentil, Dominique ; Kabuga, Charles ; Schwettman, Jurgen ; Shah, Ashih

This article previews a study defining "farmer empowerment" (increasing the capacities of disadvantaged people to move out of poverty). The study discusses specific country case studies (Uganda, Nambia, Cameroon, Burundi, Mali, and Madagascar) and their dealings with farmer organizations and practices.