This study assesses the development
effectiveness of World Bank assistance in addressing
constraints to agricultural development in Africa over the
period of fiscal years 1991-2006. This Independent
Evaluation Group (IEG) review of World Bank assistance to
agriculture in Africa has a twofold purpose. First, it is a
pilot for the proposed IEG study on Bank-wide assistance in
agriculture scheduled for fiscal year 2009. Second, the

Beyond the City evaluates the
contribution of rural development and policies to growth,
poverty alleviation, and environmental degradation in the
rest of the economy, as well as in the rural space. This
title brings together new theoretical and empirical
treatments of the links between rural and national
development. New findings and are combined with existing
literature to enhance our understanding of the how rural

In this paper the authors use a
computable general equilibrium model of the Kazakhstan
economy to assess the impact of accession to the World Trade
Organization (WTO), which encompasses (1) improved market
access; (2) Kazakhstan tariff reduction; (3) reduction of
barriers against entry by multinational service providers;
and (4) reform of local content and value-added tax policies
confronting multinational firms in the oil sector. They

This paper estimates a model of a farm
that treats the choice of crops, livestock, and irrigation
as endogenous. The model is composed of a multinomial
choice of farm type, a binomial choice of irrigation, and a
set of conditional land value functions. The model is
estimated across over 2,000 farmers in seven Latin America
countries. The results quantify how farmers adapt their
choice of farm type and irrigation to their local climate.

Despite significant changes in poverty
overall in Latin America, the proportion of indigenous
peoples living in poverty did not change much from the early
1990s to the present. While earlier work focused on human
development, much less has been done on the distribution and
returns to income-generating assets and the effect these
have on income generation strategies. The authors show that
low income and low assets are mutually reinforcing. For

This paper analyzes the impact of
climate change on animal husbandry in Africa. It regresses
the net revenue from raising animals in small and large
farms across Africa on climate, soil, and other control
variables to test the climate sensitivity of livestock. The
study is based on a survey of over 9,000 farmers across 11
countries conducted by the World Bank and the Global
Environment Facility. From this dataset, 5,400 farms were

This paper summarizes the methods and
findings of the hydrological assessment component of the
project studying likely impacts of climate change on water
resources and agriculture in Africa. The first phase of the
study used a version of a conceptual rainfall-runoff model
called WatBal (Water Balance) applied to gridded data to
simulate changes in soil moisture and runoff across the
whole continent of Africa rather than to any particular

This paper uses a growth diagnostics
approach à la Hausmann, Rodrik, and Velasco (HRV) to
identify the most 'binding' constraints to private
sector growth in Mongolia - a small, low-income,
mineral-rich, transition economy. The approach of applying
the HRV methodology is useful in those cases where a lack of
data prevents us from estimating shadow prices to identify
the most 'binding' constraint to growth. We find

Real GDP per capita and capital stock in
Cote d'Ivoire grew strongly from 1960 to 1979, but have
declined ever since, for twenty-five years. As a result, the
country has traveled a full circle from economic success to
failure in little more than a generation. What are the
long-term factors behind this dismal growth story? Are the
Ivorian development problems mostly of recent origin? Or
there are more fundamental, economic factors that explain

From what was historically known as
'Arabia Felix', a land of prosperity and
happiness, Yemen has become the most impoverished among the
Arab countries. The government of the united Yemen, formed
in 1990, has launched so far three five-year economic reform
plans with the goal of restoring Yemen's prosperity.
Have these efforts succeeded? What policies are needed to
further reduce poverty? The poverty assessment report aims

Indonesian agriculture is at a
crossroads. Supporting the livelihood of millions of
Indonesians, it needs to underpin renewed and robust growth
of the economy; and be a key component of the
Government's poverty alleviation strategy. The
challenge for the future is to reinvigorate productivity
gains among rural producers, and provide the foundation for
long run sustainability of these productivity gains.

India's Northeastern Region
consists of eight states -- Arunachal Pradesh, Assam,
Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, and Tripura
-- occupying 262,179 square kilometers and with a population
of 39 million (2001 census). This report has come about at
the request of the Indian Government for the World Bank to
focus more of its attention on the Northeastern Region in
order to support poverty reduction and development in the