Mozambique, the only Lusophone country covered in the agribusiness indicators initiative, has had a turbulent history since independence. Civil unrest over some 20 years and frequent drought in southern Mozambique, coupled with floods near the many waterways that transect the country (mainly east-west), have inhibited an agricultural transformation. Even so, Mozambique could be a regional breadbasket. The country has much potentially usable arable land, along with access to river water for irrigation in many agricultural production zones, particularly in central and northern Mozambique.

Cities in Sub-Saharan Africa are experiencing rapid population growth. Yet their economic growth has not kept pace. Why? One factor might be low capital investment, due in part to Africa’s relative poverty: Other regions have reached similar stages of urbanization at higher per capita GDP. This study, however, identifies a deeper reason: African cities are closed to the world.

This paper examines the effects of urbanization on development and growth. It begins with a labor market perspective and emphasizes the importance of agglomeration economies, both static and dynamic. It then argues that more productive jobs in cities do not exist in a void and underscores the importance of job and firm dynamics. In turn, these dynamics are shaped by the broader characteristics of urban systems. A number of conclusions are drawn. First, agglomeration effects are quantitatively important and pervasive.

The implementation of metro line 2, now under way, will provide a modern, 35 kilometer mass transit axis linking major population and job centers in Lima, the capital of Peru, with Callao to the west, the country’s chief seaport and international airport. Integrated with the Lima-Callao region’s existing public transport network, line 2 will create a major corridor that will improve the accessibility of jobs, services, and markets for 2.3 million people and provide a backbone for more efficient urban development.

This report aims to extract lessons on slum upgrading and involuntary resettlement policies and practices learned from the process of addressing the Badia East case, which involved complex interactions between affected people, NGOs, the Bank and Lagos State Government.

This paper introduces a novel top-down approach to geospatially identify and distinguish areas of mixed use from predominantly residential areas within urban agglomerations. Under the framework of the World Bank’s Central American Country Disaster Risk Profiles (CDRP) initiative, a disaggregated property stock exposure model has been developed as one of the key elements for disaster risk and loss estimation. Global spatial datasets are therefore used consistently to ensure wide-scale applicability and transferability.

Despite myriad challenges, Kenya has emerged in recent years as one of Africa’s frontier economies, with headline growth in the most recent decade propelling the country toward middle-income status. Less well understood is how risk dynamics associated with production, markets, and policy adversely impact sector performance, in terms of both influencing ex ante decision making among farmers, traders, and other sector stakeholders and causing ex post losses to crops, livestock, and incomes - destabilizing livelihoods and jeopardizing the country’s food security.

The latest issue of Handshake, focused on public-private partnerships in the Innovation. “An age of constant invention naturally begets one of constant failure,”the New York Times Magazine declared in a recent story called “Welcometo the Failure Age.” Its core premise—that innovation is inextricably linked with failure—may be a fresh insight for the high-tech era, but has long been understood by those who work in infrastructure. To state the obvious:for those of us in infrastructure PPPs, failure is not a novel concept.Innovation is.

Urban sanitation remains a significant challenge for most low- and middle-income countries. While sanitation coverage has been increasing across both the 48 least developed countries (LDCs) and developing regions as a whole, progress has been relatively slow. In many cities, even where improved on-site facilities are used to contain excreta, the level of quality and access to services for the emptying, conveyance, treatment, and disposal of the resulting fecal sludge is usually limited. These services are collectively called fecal sludge management (FSM) services.

This paper provides a brief overview of the intersection of state and customary laws governing land in peri-urban settlements around Honiara, focusing on their impact upon landowners, particularly women landowners. It suggests that the intersection of customary and state legal systems allows a small number of individuals, predominantly men, to solidify their control over customary land. This has occurred to the detriment of many landowners, who have often found themselves excluded from both decision-making processes and the distribution of financial benefits from the use of land.

Romania aims to be a country in which all citizens are provided with an equal opportunity toparticipate in society, where their basic needs are met and their differences respected, and whereall people feel valued and can live in dignity.Our society is still far from this ideal. One in every five Romanian people is income poor. Most of the people living in relative poverty in Romania are in persistent poverty, meening that they have been in poverty for at least the last three years.

Ulaanbaatar's (UB) population has swollen from half a million in 2001 to approximately 1.2 million in 2011, accounting for over 40 percent of the country's population. This trend is likely to continue as economic growth is increasingly concentrated in UB. With its growing population and concerns in rising inequality, the city is facing increasing pressure to maintain and expand service provision (especially infrastructure). The local tax on wages is expected to continue to provide substantial revenues to the UB government, which will assist the growing demand for services.