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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Health Expenditures, Services and Outcomes in Africa

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-04) Peters, David H. ; Kandola, Kami ; Elemendorf, A. Edward ; Chellaraj, Gnanaraj

In the past thirty years, Sub-Saharan African countries have made remarkable improvements in health conditions and status. However, they still suffer from some of the worst health problems in the world, and AIDS is making conditions much worse than they will be otherwise. This study, health expenditures, services, and outcomes in Africa considers 48 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa and outlines broad patterns of health spending, service delivery, mortality, fertility and nutrition in the early to mid-1990s. The study focuses on how to better monitor progress and use information to identify problems and improve health outcomes within and among different African countries. Good information about inputs, processes and results in the health sector is vital for policymakers to make intelligent choices about health strategies and investments, and often is simply not available. For purposes of the study, countries were classified as lowest-income, low-income and middle-income categories. Over three quarters of the African countries are low income or even lowest income countries, and nearly all have weak health management systems.
Burundi - Investing in Leadership Development through the Rapid Results Approach

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-08) World Bank

The government of Burundi appealed to the World Bank Institute (WBI) for help in strengthening the capacities of leadership to implement policies and programs that would achieve measurable results. The new government needed to make tough decisions on competing priorities, including allocating an estimated US$12 billion to achieve the millennium development goals, and carrying out reforms to ensure efficient allocation of public resources. The government understood it would need to invest in leadership development in order to drive change at the institutional level and achieve results, and that this would require more than the traditional classroom method of leadership training. Instead, the following approaches were needed: 1) training programs adapted to the needs of leaders; 2) a learning-by-doing approach to capacity development; and 3) a participatory approach to action planning, work planning, and defining modalities for resource management.
Eritrea - Cultural Assets Rehabilitation Project

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-06) Mastri, Lawrence

The Cultural Assets Rehabilitation Project aimed to strengthen the management of public records in order to contribute to the development of a historiography of Eritrea while improving the efficiency of the public sector. The project will also strengthen the management of public records both to contribute to the development of a historiography of Eritrea while improving the efficiency of the public sector. Overall the project was able to meet its objectives of testing out and developing the means for more fully integrating the conservation and management of cultural assets into local and national economic development. Furthermore, it promoted learning in many areas that are central to development at an institutional and skills level.
Lesotho - Education Sector Development Project

( 2008-05) Mastri, Lawrence

The objectives of the Education Sector Development Project (ESDP) addresses critical needs in the areas of basic education, such as expanding access through the construction, and furnishing of new classrooms. The project aimed to revise curricula, develop instructional materials, and strengthen the system of assessment. In addition to recruiting more teachers, training for teachers at both pre-and-in service was planned to upgrade the standards of teaching. To address the needs of students enrolled in Technical and Vocational Education programs, the project proposed to introduce standardized craft curricula, strengthen skills certification and testing, and improve policy and management capacity within the sub sector. The project planned to support the National University of Lesotho in its efforts to introduce quality enhancement and cost containment measures. Finally, the objectives included improving sectoral management by reorganizing the Ministry of Education (MOE), promoting decentralization, and school level management.
PREM Anchor Support to the Africa Region

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-04) Danny Leipziger

The goal of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) Network is to shape policies and to help countries build successful national strategies for sustained, shared growth, and to strengthen partnerships at the country level for improved aid effectiveness. There is no region in which this goal is more challenging than in Africa. In support of the Africa Action Plan (AAP), the PREM Anchor has actively stepped up its support to the Africa Region (AFR) in fiscal year 2006 (FY06).As of the end of January 2006, Anchor staff had provided nearly 83 staff weeks in direct cross-support alone. Activities have included knowledge generation, high level policy support on missions, the development of toolkits and diagnostics to improve policy advice on growth strategies, among others. Most of this work has been provided on a demand driven basis, and PREM plans to continue providing such services subject to its budgetary and skills capacity. This note illustrates how the PREM Anchor's support to the PREM Anchor support to the AFR connects with the objectives of the AAP. The PREM Anchor is working closely with the AFR on ways to improve the results focus and analytical foundations of poverty reduction strategies (PRSs). A study is under way on the integration of PRS reporting and budget implementation covering eight African countries to improve existing reporting instruments and assess how to better align PRS reporting with budget reporting. Work is also under way to strengthen the quality of second generation PRSs and their relevance as a framework for scaling up and improving aid effectiveness.
Mali - Private Sector Assistance Grant

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-03) Mastri, Lawrence

The principal objective of the project was to help foster the development of private sector enterprises, so that they could lead the growth of Mali's economy. The project aimed at putting in place mechanisms and measures to support the government's strategy of breaking from past reliance on the public sector. The project proposed to achieve this by: (a) completing implementation of improvements to the regulatory environment that had been introduced starting in the late eighties; (b) assisting a private business support structure, APEP, the Agence pour la Promotion de l'Entreprise Privee, to coordinate a program of institutional support to private non-financial enterprises; (c) improving the functioning of economic chambers (principally the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Mali), the Government's office charged with public enterprise reform, BEP, and departments of the administration responsible of administering regulations affecting private enterprises; and (d) inducing the strengthening of the banking sector and the preparation of a coherent financial sector strategy.
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.
Malaria Booster Program for Africa : Gaining Ground against a Major Challenge to Health and Development

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-02) Qamruddin, Jumana ; Constantinou, Nansia

Malaria is a treatable and preventable disease yet it remains a major challenge to achieving the Millennium Development Goals in Africa. It is not only a serious health problem, but an issue that cripples development. Every year, malaria infects more than 500 million people around the world and is one of the leading causes of child deaths on in Africa, with 3,000 children dying from it every day. It is estimated that malaria costs Africa $12 billion a year in direct costs and lost productivity. The key features of the Booster Program are the following: (i) support for country-led operations to reduce illnesses and avoidable deaths from malaria while improving the capacity for service delivery; (ii) emphasis on both effective scale-up of critical disease control interventions and the strengthening of health systems; (iii) partnerships to broker global agreements and support country led programs; (iv) monitoring results against monies spent; and v) knowledge generation and innovations to finance global public goods for malaria control. Due in part to the efforts of the Booster Program, countries and regions are closing gaps in their health systems and employing springboard for the ultimate goal of eradicating malaria.
Building Capacity in Management and Financing in the Road Sector

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-01) Brushett, Stephen ; Sampson, Les ; Waithaka, Solomon

This report as about onging operational, economic, and sector work carried out by the World Bank and its member governments in the Africa Region.This note focuses post-experience training in disciplines including, but not limited to, management and finance to enable the new institutions and the governments concerned to reap the benefits of international best practices and to effectively internalize the key lessons of experience. It argues that short course programs aimed at an executive audience can be considered a highly effective and timely means of delivery of the benefits of training.
Cameroon - Higher Education Technical Training Project

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-12) Mastri, Lawrence

The Higher Education Technical Training Project's objective was to introduce, develop, and test a new and improved model of public higher technical education in Cameroon in the Institut Universitaire Technologique (IUT) Douala. If successful, the model could then be used as a basis for reforming other higher education institutions in Cameroon. The IUT Douala was among the most advanced in this process, and IDA believed that it could serve as a reference for other institutions. The project had defined eight indicators to evaluate the achievement of the development objective in establishing a new model for technical higher education. The indicators provided a measure of the involvement of the private sector and of the impact on students. Except for two indicators, which were dependent on the granting of full financial autonomy, all other indicators were fully met. Some of the lessons are as follows: (a)The development of a pilot in an institution requires an assessment of the organizational and managerial capacity of the institution to carry out the experiment. (b) Well defined qualitative indicators are crucial to help pilot the implementation process. (c) Developing a cooperative relationship with the private sector takes time. The private sector needs to be convinced that real and sustainable benefits can be gained from this cooperation. (d) Study tours by key stakeholders to countries which have undergone a similar process helps gain support for the reform and build momentum.