Person:
Coulibaly, Souleymane
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Macroeconomic and structural policies,
Growth diagnostics,
Fiscal policy
Degrees
Departments
Central Africa Unit, Africa Region, The World Bank
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Souleymane Coulibaly, from Cote d'Ivoire, holds a double Ph.D. degree in International Trade and Economic Geography from the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne (France) and the University of Lausanne (Switzerland). His publications and ongoing research deal with the impact of geography on firms’ location, trade flows and regional integration. He was a co-author of 2009 World Development Report "Reshaping Economic Geography", contributed to the 2005 Global Economic Prospect report on regionalism, and recently published the book “Eurasian Cities: New Realities along the Silk Road” in the ECA regional studies series. He is the Program Leader and Lead Economist for Central Africa. He joined the World Bank Africa Region in January 2014 from the Operation and Policy and Quality Unit (OPCS) where he was covering Development Policy Lending and Guarantee policies and operations, and represented the unit in the Non-Concessional Borrowing Policy committee. Before OPCS, he was in the Eastern and Central Asia (ECA) region working simultaneously as trade economist and country economist of some former Soviet countries (Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan), as well as ECA regional trade coordinator. Before joining the World Bank as a Young Professional in September 2006, he used to be lecturer at the Ecole Nationale Superieure de Statistiques et d’Economie Appliquée (ENSEA) of Abidjan, teaching assistant at the University of Lausanne, and economist at the Economic and International Relations department of NESTLE in Vevey, Switzerland.
Publication Search Results
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Publication
Eurasian Cities : New Realities along the Silk Road
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2012-09-07)Eurasian cities, unique in the global spatial landscape, were part of the world's largest experiment in urban development. The challenges they now face because of their history offer valuable lessons to urban planners and policy makers across the world from places that are still urbanizing to those already urbanized. More than three-quarters of the built environment in Eurasian cities was developed after 1945 in a centralized fashion. Central planners could implement whatever they considered good practice planning solutions, and Eurasia's cities became their drawing boards. The central planners got a lot right easy access to public transportation, district heating networks, almost universal access to water systems, and socially integrated neighborhoods. At the same time, they failed to acknowledge the importance of markets and individual choice in shaping sustainable and congenial places for people to live in. From a spatial point of view, it became clear that many Eurasian cities were developed in places where they should not have been. To populate sparsely inhabited territory, Soviet planners pushed urban development toward the heart of Siberia. Many of the resulting cities had no rural hinterland to rely on for daily food needs and had to depend on subsidized goods and services. Many Eurasian cities face an overdeveloped public service infrastructure that is hard to maintain and upgrade. Facing an economic downturn in the 1990s and lacking experience in decentralized urban management, many local authorities struggled to run these services. Public transport ridership fell in most cities, with more people commuting in private vehicles. Recycling networks disappeared, and soaring consumption overwhelmed solid waste management systems. District heating systems became large energy sieves hard to run and maintain without subsidies. Plaguing water systems are large shares of nonrevenue water, and low tariffs do not ensure the cost recovery needed for upgrades and repairs. This book discusses all five of these issues rethinking, planning, connecting, greening, and financing in more detail. It seeks to analyze the key challenges created by central planning, outline how these challenges were addressed in the transition years, and identify some steps Eurasian cities should take to chart a sustainable development path for themselves. The book also shows how some of the most progressive cities in the region have been tackling these problems and, in doing so, shedding the last vestiges of the socialist economy.