Due to climate change and increasing
food prices, emphasis needs to be placed on addressing water
management as a key determinant for agricultural production
and productivity. However, governments and donors have
tended to pay relatively little attention to this area, and
investments remain low. This report, which is based on
economic and sector work carried out in the Water Anchor of
the World Bank, highlights the importance of improving water

This report describes a pilot study of
natural risk hazards in the peri-urban extension areas of
the Dakar Metropolitan Area, Senegal. The area subject of
this study stretches across 580 square kilometers, covering
less than 1 percent of the national territory, but housing
about 50 percent of Senegal's urban population. Much of
the rapid population growth of the Dakar Metropolitan Area
is taking place beyond the boundaries of the Department of

The agriculture sector has been and will
continue to be important for poverty alleviation efforts in
Indonesia. Indonesia was very successful in increasing
agriculture productivity during the 1970s and up to the
early 1990s, but productivity stagnated during most of the
1990s, partly as a result of declining public investments.
Public spending on agriculture has increased significantly
in the last decade, but a large share of that spending has

This report attempts to diagnose
existing constraints and prospects for growth in
people's incomes in South Kordofan. Given the breadth
and depth of difficulties facing the state, the focus is on
identifying the key areas of reform, or binding constraints,
to growth. There is a combination of extremely low social
returns, the prevalence of government and market failures,
the weak investment climate and the limited access to

The situation in The Gambia is a good
example of the many challenges small states have to deal
with. The country is faced with institutional capacity
constraints and due to a narrow resource base and a small
domestic market, its production base and exports show little
diversification. Like other small states, the country tends
to rely heavily on external trade and foreign investment to
overcome its scale and resource limitation, increasing its

Traditionally both national and regional
development planning in Vietnam has been driven by
'top-down' Central Government social and economic
targets based on limited analytical investigation. However,
with the advent of the free market economy in Vietnam since
the late 1980s, vigorous global economic competitiveness and
Vietnam's membership to the World Trade Organization
(WTO), changes in national policy in Vietnam have now

Interest in investment climates has
emerged relatively recently. In the 1960s and 1970s,
governments in many countries believed they should play a
direct role in rural credit, input supply, production,
trade, transport, distribution, and even marketing. However,
in the 1980s and 1990s, government-dominated systems fell
into disgrace because of poor performance. For the rural
sector, the primary focus had traditionally been on

Forest in Kenya is an important source
of livelihood, environmental services, and economic growth.
In November of 2005 the Government of Kenya (GOK) ratified a
new Forests Act. The act contains many innovative provisions
to correct previous shortcomings, including a strong
emphasis on partnerships, the engagement of local
communities, and promotion of private investment. The
purpose of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is

This Country Economic Report (CER) is a
contribution to the ongoing debate among decision makers and
diverse stakeholders in Namibia on the outlook for sustained
growth and employment creation that addresses distribution
issues as well. The report addresses the following main
questions. What has been the past growth and employment
record and what can be learned? What are the main binding
constraints to growth? What has been the impact of this

This review's objectives were to
examine the structure and performance of the agricultural
research and extension systems (public and private) at the
central and provincial levels, identify successes as well as
constraints to improving the system s effectiveness for
fostering innovation, and propose options for further policy
and institutional development, drawing on lessons from
international experience. The review focused principally on

The main objective of this fiscal note
is to assist the Government of Andhra Pradesh (GoAP) in
meeting the challenges mentioned above. To this end, it
provides input into the state's rolling medium-term
fiscal framework exercise. The new Fiscal Responsibility and
Budget Management (FRBM) act requires that the government
will lay out in each financial year a medium-term fiscal
policy statement (together with three-year rolling targets

The founding document of SAGCOT, the Investment Blueprint, was developed by the founding partners encompassing government, donor partners, farmers, and the private sector. The SAGCOT Investment Blueprint details the objectives of SAGCOT and how these will be achieved. This is a long-term initiative, which will take 20 years to fully implement. However, the positive impact of bringing the public and private sector together to develop agriculture is already yielding results. Since its inception, SAGCOT has achieved the following main milestones: