Africa Region Findings & Good Practice Infobriefs

415 items available

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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.

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 42

Entrepreneurship and Firm Performance in Sub-Saharan Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1999-12) Ramachandran, Vijaya; Shah, Manju Kedia
The development of the private sector in Sub-Saharan Africa is of crucial importance to the overall rate of economic growth of the region. Entrepreneurial firms have a prominent role in the private sector in many countries in the region. This analysis measures the impact of various entrepreneurial characteristics on the rate of firm growth. The analysis uses data from the Regional Program on Enterprise Development (RPED) at the World Bank. Approximately 200 firms in Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Tanzania were surveyed in each country in the food processing, textile, furniture, and metalworking sectors; only the subset of firms owned by entrepreneurs is used in this study.
CARE Peri-Urban Lusaka Small Enterprise (CARE PULSE) Project Zambia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1999-12) Amuah, Alexander K.
In January 1992, at the invitation of the Zambian Government, CARE International commenced operations in Zambia and set up a local branch named CARE Zambia. The initial focus of its programs was emergency relief in response to the severe drought of the early 1990s and interventions to militate against the effects of escalating inflation and extreme poverty in urban areas. Two years after its inauguration, CARE Zambia launched the Peri-Urban Lusaka Small Enterprise (PULSE) Project. The overall goal is to increase household income, economic security and employment opportunities among the families of poor micro-entrepreneurs in peri-urban areas of Zambia, through the provision of sustainable savings and credit services. The program provides working capital to micro and small-scale entrepreneurs, mostly women, who reside in the peri-urban areas of Mtendere and George. This service has recently been extended to Mandevu, Chawama and some peri-urban areas of Lusaka.
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.
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.
Privatization in Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 1999-04) Cambell White, Oliver C.; Bhatia, Anita
In a way, the story of privatization in Africa reflects some of the problems which have beset many other development processes: lack of political commitment, poor design, insufficient resources, weak management, and corruption. Privatization in Africa is the outcome of a study undertaken during 1995 and 1996. Up to that time, privatization throughout the continent had been slow, with few visible results and a general feeling among observers and donors that African governments' commitment to the process was generally half-hearted. The purpose of the study was to answer three questions about privatization: (i) what has been happening? (ii) What has resulted? And (iii) what could be done to improve the process in terms of outcome. The data and analyses presented to answer these questions fill a significant gap in the published literature on privatization in Africa. The case-study countries were Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, Togo, Uganda, and Zambia. The study shows that more privatization has been happening across Africa than was generally thought to be the case; but it also raises many issues about how the process has been planned and implemented. The controversy starts with why African governments have privatized. The study maintains that the evidence suggests that most governments have privatized reluctantly and not for the reasons set out in policy statements.
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.
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.
Madagascar - Savings and Loans
(Washington, DC, 1998-09) World Bank
The first savings and loan associations (SLAs - mutuelles d'epargne et de credit) were established in Madagascar in 1993 under a pilot project supported by the World Bank. By the time the project closed in December 1997, 54 SLAs had been established in four regions, Toamasina, Lac Alaotra, Fianarantsoa and Haute-Mania, and they had started to group themselves into regional unions. The lessons learned from this pilot project are being factored into the preparation of the follow-up project. The main lesson is that it takes more effort to maintain and develop Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) than to create them. The enthusiasm of donors to provide assistance in microfinance and the lack of readiness of the government to receive it resulted in duplications and contradictions. These can be avoided in the future by a well-defined national strategy on microfinance. To progress towards self-sustainability, MFIs must also move into urban areas where population density helps to lower the costs of delivering financial services and where savings can be more readily mobilized to support growth.
The Role of Information, Education and Communication in the Malawi Social Action Fund
(Washington, DC, 1998-07) World Bank
The Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF), which began implementation in 1996, was proposed by the Government of Malawi as a quick-disbursing poverty alleviation facility that would be based on and respond to the needs and demands of the country's poor rural communities. The country's experience with self-help projects and programs to date had not been notably successful this project was intended to herald a paradigm shift in this respect. It was designed to promote a change in the way all development actors, including, and perhaps, especially, the government, would work with other stakeholders. Communities were required to contribute up to 20 percent of total sub-project costs, in the form of cash, or labor or materials. Participation was therefore a key factor in the designing of the project. The Information, Education, and Communication (IEC) component was primarily intended as a tool to generate support for and disseminate information about the project. However, it evolved and was shaped, as were the rest of the project and its actors, by the dynamics of project implementation.