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Gender and Economic Growth Assessment for Ghana 2007
This study presents an assessment of the role of gender in economic growth in Ghana with emphasis on constraints to enterprise operations, investment, and growth among women owned firms. Anecdotal evidence suggests that women own up to a third of businesses in Africa, and that this represents a significant source for scaling up economic growth in such countries. In Ghana, women make up about 50.1 percent of the entire labor force and are mostly involved in micro enterprises and the retail trade.
Systematic Property Registration
This paper looks at a variety of technical issues, challenges, and problems that arise during systematic first registration programs, their causes and what can be done to deal with them. Its aim is to provide practical advice to those who are designing or engaged in first registration programs that use the systematic adjudication approach and also those who supervise such programs so that the issues covered in this paper can be eliminated or their negative impact reduced.
Policy Brief
Agriculture is the economic foundation of many Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries, employing about 60 percent of the workforce and contributing an average of 30 percent of gross domestic product. Yet agricultural growth rates for SSA declined in the 2000 and food insecurity remains a concern, with malnourishment only dropping from 34 to 30 percent in two decades. Various projections suggest that food production must increase by 70-100 percent by 2050 to meet the demands of a world with 9 billion people and changing diets.
Africa Can Help Feed Africa
Africa's growing demand for food has been met increasingly by imports from the global market. This, coupled with rising global food prices, brings ever-mounting food import bills. In addition, population growth and changing demand patterns will double demands over the next 10 years. Two key issues must be addressed: (a) establishing a consistent and stable policy environment for regional trade in fertilizers; and (b) investing in institutions that reduce the transaction costs of coordination failures.
Geography of Poverty in Mali
This study discusses the impact of economic geography and (low) population density on development outcomes in Mali and explores how policies to reduce poverty can be made more effective by taking these two factors into account. The crisis in north Mali which started in 2012 and continues to date has brought questions of economic geography to the center of attention.
The Uganda Poverty Assessment Report 2016
Uganda’s progress in reducing poverty from 1993 to 2006 is a remarkable story of success that has been well told. The narrative of Uganda’s continued, albeit it slightly slower, progress in reducing poverty since 2006 is less familiar. This was a period in which growth slowed as the gains from reforms years earlier had been fully realized, and weak infrastructure and increasing corruption increasingly constrained private sector competitiveness (World Bank 2015). This report examines Uganda’s progress in reducing poverty, with a specific focus on the period 2006 to 2013.
Botswana Development Policy Review
Botswana has been one of the most successful countries in the developing world over the last 40 years by many measures. Incomes have grown at a sustained pace, poverty has fallen, and the citizenry has become more educated. To be sure, poverty and income inequalities remain a problem, but rising standards of living have meant a better life for this generation of Batswana than any before it. The question facing the country leadership is whether this commendable performance can be sustained into the next generation. There are clouds on the horizon that cannot be ignored.
Institutional Approaches to Electrification
Energy poverty is a global problem: access to energy services is crucial to meet basic household needs, deliver and access public services, and generate income. Less than 10 percent of Sub-Saharan (SSA) rural households have access to electricity, with an overall access rate below 25 percent. One of the main obstacles for SSA electrification practitioners is the difficulty in obtaining practical and timely knowledge on how to overcome economic, technical, institutional, and political barriers to electrification in their day-to-day work.
Urban Land Acquisition and Involuntary Resettlement
Expansion and development of urban areas require acquisition of land, which, in turn, often requires physical relocation of people who own or occupy this land. Land acquisition and resettlement may also be required to improve the lives of the more than 1 billion people who currently live in slums around the world, most of them in developing countries. Therefore, any effort to embark on significant, sustainable urban development needs to ensure that there are adequate processes for land acquisition and, so that resettlement does not become a constraint to much needed urban development.
Urban 'Novostroiki' Settlements in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic
The primary purpose of this study was to profile residents and living conditions in novostroiki, or the rapidly growing areas of new self-built construction ringing Bishkek where more than one fourth of city residents now live, in order to identify the major problems and areas for potential future Bank and donor engagement. The study findings are based on analysis of results from a survey of 493 households in nine novostroiki established from 1989-1991, as well as focus group findings, a study of the institutional framework, and a study of sanitation.