During the 1970s and 1980s in Tanzania,
there was a widespread perception, though a somewhat narrow,
and inaccurate one, that high and accelerating rates of
deforestation in some areas, was primarily being driven by
demand for woodfuel, and construction timber. In order to
The largest hydrographic basin in the
world, the Amazon is the source of 20 percent of all the
fresh water on the planet. The Basin covers some 600 million
hectares in nine countries, over half of which are located
within Brazil's national boundaries. A striking
The note focuses on the external
benefits of rural electrification (RE), i.e., improved
access to communication, education, and economic
opportunities, in addition to extended health services. It
outlines key lessons to scaling up RE, namely macroeconomic
Participatory community-based Natural
Resources Management (NRM) Projects have been implemented
over the last 5-6 years in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, and
Niger with the support of France, Germany, Norway, the
United States, and the World Bank's International
This has to be accomplished against a
background of high illiteracy rates, rapidly growing
populations, low and erratic rainfall, inherently infertile
soils, and development strategies which have had a strong
urban bias. Under such conditions, traditional production
Nontraditional infrastructure service
providers supply many low-income consumers in slums and
urban peripheries in developing countries. And technological
change has eased entry by new providers. But the current
approach to private participation in infrastructure
Accounting for around a third of the
1996 Goss Domestic Product (GDP) of US$ 9 billion (second
only to oil), and almost three-fourths of all employment,
agriculture is a dominant sector of the Cameroonian economy.
Also, as in most African countries, poverty in Cameroon is
The livestock sector in Mali accounts
for 43 percent of cattle exports in the Sahel sub-region.
However, while the sub-sector accounted for 28.6 percent of
agriculture's contribution to Gross Domestic Product
(GDP), investment in it amounted to only 10.7 percent of the
? This article outlines the role that
the World Bank will play in supporting a modified rural
development strategy for the Sub-Saharan Africa region: The
Bank will be more selective in targeting countries for
assistance in rural development programs, focusing on those
Between 1970 and 1992, the World Bank
assisted financially in about 15 wildlife-related projects
in Sub-Saharan Africa. The lending volume was US$ 368
million or about 1percent of the Bank's totals lending
during the same period. While geographically, these projects
Located in the heart of Mali, the Office
du Niger (ON) is one of the oldest and largest irrigation
schemes in Sub-Saharan Africa. The French, who began the
scheme in 1932, planned on developing about 1,000,000
hectares over a period of 50 years. The original objectives
Over the past thirty years, most of
Sub-Saharan Africa has seen rapid population growth, poor
agricultural performance, and increasing environmental
degradation. Why do these problems seem so intractable? Are
they connected? Do they reinforce each other? If so, what