Africa Region Findings & Good Practice Infobriefs

415 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

https://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.

Items in this collection

Now showing 1 - 10 of 38

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.
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.
Progress in Public Expenditure Management in Africa : Evidence from World Bank Surveys
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1999-08) Mohan, Prasad C.
One of the World Bank's key advisory roles is to assist its partner countries to make strategic decisions about the use of their public funds. Governments and the Bank together assess the public sector's potential role as a provider, financier, or regulator of services, or simply as a catalyst for private sector activity. The Bank's traditional vehicle for contributing to this kind of analytical work is the Public Expenditure Review (PER). The Africa Region undertook a survey of 20 task managers of PERs in 1997/98. This Note summarizes the main survey findings and key recommendations.
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.
A Regional Approach to Capacity Building for Coastal Management : Emerging Lessons
(Washington, DC, 1999-07) World Bank
The numerous economic opportunities offered within the coastal zone attract increasing populations to these areas. As these populations and their economic activities grow, there is a corresponding compelling need for sound management of coastal and marine resources, so that developmental options can be kept open. Effective coastal and marine resource management transcends boundaries and a regional approach is clearly the most effective method for governance of these fragile areas and important resources. Regional environmental organizations have, however, not always proved to be useful to the countries they were created to serve. Constraints, including unclear mission, lack of priority-setting, poor management, politics, inadequate funding and weak national support, have derailed many regional environmental organizations. The promising start of the Secretariat for Eastern African Coastal Area Management (SEACAM) illustrates that regional organization can provide effective support to national Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) efforts.
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.
Environmental Information Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa : From Innovation to Management
(1999-02) Prévost, Yves; Gilruth, Peter
The development of Environmental Information Systems (EIS) in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in the 1970s and 1980s was slow, in spite of several efforts to introduce the technology. However since 1990, growth has been phenomenal. Whereas, only one or two institutions in each country were previously active in EIS, over 500 EIS related projects are now under way, involving thousands of African experts, plus numerous development partners from non government organizations (NGOs), the private sector, bilateral agencies, and international organizations. Not surprisingly, the number of actors involved in EIS construction is expected to increase even further, until all institutions and organizations involved in environmental management have adopted EIS-related technologies. The EIS concept as know it today emerges from several initiatives to promote the more efficient use of data in environmental management. First, the advent of satellite remote sensing in 1972 gave a new perspective to viewing the earth's resources and led to large data and training subsidies to stimulate the use of first Landsat and then SPOT products. Next came the early environmental applications of remote sensing in Africa, championed by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which used satellite imagery to monitor rangeland dynamics and desertification. The term EIS only came into wide use in the 1990s, concurrent with the advent of natural resource and environment action plans. The concept reflects our growing understanding of the link between environment and development. Thus, environmental information is the data, statistics, and other documents, that enable managers to identify and quantify specific environmental resource categories, and to determine their optimum utilization. Seen in this larger context, an EIS is the institutional and technical response needed to improve the role and benefits of information in environmental management.
Social Funds and Public Works and Employment Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1999-02) Frigenti, L.; Harth, A.; Huque, R.
The note outlines the lessons learned after a decade of experience with social funds, public works, and employment operations in Sub-Saharan Africa, and illustrates that a variety of models, and institutional structures exist within this sample of operations. It also reflects that projects need to be designed according to country contexts, political realities, and geographical considerations.
The Africa Live Data Base : Statistics for Development
(Washington, DC, 1998-12) World Bank
The Africa Live Database (LDB) is a user-friendly computer-based data tool that consists of: a) a Local Data Base--a tool for in-depth economic work; b) query-- a tool for storing and manipulating economic and sectoral variables; and c) Africa briefings-- presorted ready-to-use data. The system was developed by the Africa Region of the World Bank with two complementary goals in mind: 1) in the short term, to provide staff in the region with an efficient means of collecting, analyzing and manipulating economic and sectoral data; and 2) in the long term, to become the linchpin of a major effort for capacity building in African countries, aimed at upgrading local capacity in statistical data collection and analysis. This, combined with other initiatives, could then become a powerful tool for monitoring the impact of policy on development. The LDB responds to three sets of client needs: a) staff in the World Bank, b) users of statistical information in client countries, and c) other users of statistical information worldwide-- other donors, researchers, banks, etc.
Lessons from Africa's Social Funds, Public Works and Employment Projects
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1998-11) Frigenti, Laura; Harth, Alberto; Huque, Rumana
The note focuses on the review of "Local solutions to regional problems: the growth of social funds and public works, and employment projects in Sub-Saharan Africa", which compares, and draws lessons from the African experience. It highlights three social funds in Zambia, Eritrea and Angola, and three urban works projects in Senegal, Benin, and Mauritania, and provides stakeholder views: it reports high impact on employment, income, and local capacity building; improved coordination between service providers; weak consideration to the sustainability of micro-projects; and, participatory inadequacies, at the expense of long-term sustainability. The note implies the greatest challenge these operations face, is the reconciliation of short-term, and long-term goals, and, beneficiary participation, and ownership should be key to social funds project design, with appropriate technical standards in design, construction, and supervision for micro-projects sustainability.