Sound, deep, and efficient financial
sectors are vital for high sustained, private sector-led
growth. But financial sectors in their current form pose
major problems for the economies of sub Saharan Africa
(SSA). Insufficient access to credit by small and medium-
sized enterprises constrains their ability to expand and
limits countries' growth potential. Most households
cannot build formal savings, so their ability to escape

The Bank has been involved in a number
of urban upgrading projects over the last three decades,
which have demonstrated that quality of life in slums can be
improved through realistic policies, investments and
implementation processes. This note reviews community-driven
development (CDD) in World Bank-assisted urban upgrading
projects. The note identifies how CDD approaches have been
applied in such projects. The review focuses on a small

The note looks at poverty in Ecuador,
assessing macroeconomic developments through its policies to
maintain stability with fiscal discipline, and increase
economic productivity and competitiveness, in particular,
the 1998/99 crisis, the 2000 dollarization and their effect
on poverty. From 1990 to 2001, national consumption-based
poverty rose from 40 to 45 percent, and the number of poor
people increased from 3.5 to 5.2 million. Poverty increased

This note deals with the extent to
which, and the means by which, project level distributional
analysis of benefits can be undertaken and how poverty
impact indicators can be developed. Section 1 sets out the
issues associated with using traditional cost benefit
analysis for the appraisal of pro-poor projects. Section 2
discusses the techniques and analysis available to consider
the distributional consequences of a transport change,

In 2002, half of Mexico's
population lived in poverty and one fifth in extreme
poverty, slightly lower than before the 1994-1995 crisis.
Mexico has made major progress in some poverty dimensions
-health, nutrition and education outcomes, access to basic
health and education services, electricity, water and (to a
lesser extent) sanitation. Large increases in government
spending enabled key social programs to expand. Programs

Poverty and economic stagnation
characterize most rural areas in Peru. National growth has
been slow and uneven since the mid-1970s, benefiting urban
areas rather than rural ones. Between 1985 and 2000, the
number of poor people increased by 71 percent. The incidence
of poverty (67 percent) and extreme poverty (40 percent) is
highest in rural areas, reaching 73 percent (poverty) and 41
percent (extreme poverty) in the sierra. This means that 4.2

The proliferation of urban slums is due
in large part to obsolete regulatory, legal and
institutional frameworks at the local level governing land
use, development standards, land registration and titling.
These regulations are often exclusionary, insisting on
development norms and standards that are outside the realm
of the poor to pay and subdivision procedures are often over
burdensome, leading to informal land subdivision, thus

The Sustainable and Participatory Energy
Management project - PROGEDE was implemented by the
government between 1997 and 2004. From project preparation
to supervision the World Bank worked in close collaboration
with Dutch Co-operation (DGIS). At the time of project
preparation, forest-based traditional fuels (firewood and
charcoal), mainly used for household cooking purposes,
represented 53 percent of Senegal's final energy

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
characteristic of the Amazon region is its tremendous
biodiversity, which includes an estimated 50,000 species of
plants, 3,000 species of fish and over 400 known species of

Nigeria possesses a wealth of natural
resources including major oil and gas deposits, a variety of
solid minerals, good agricultural land, a well developed
industrial base, an extensive banking system, a large labor
force, and a vibrant private sector. However, the
country's tremendous potential for growth and
development has yet to be fulfilled. Real income and
consumption per capita today are scarcely higher than they

Environmental degradation of coastal
areas was identified as a key issue in Ghana's
Environmental Action Plan. The central objective of the
World Bank-assisted Integrated Coastal Zone Management
(ICZM) initiative in Ghana, which commenced in 1995, was to
identify economically, socially and environmentally
appropriate interventions and projects in the coastal zone
that improve the prospects for human development. ICZM is

? 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
that demonstrate commitment to appropriate agricultural
policy and investment. It will expand its information,
education and communication initiatives to help governments