Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank, congratulated the editorial team of National Geographic for the special issue on Africa. National Geographic has played a unique role in broadening the knowledge of the world. The World Bank partnered with National Geographic to produce a full-color wall map to raise awareness of the millennium development goals (MDGs) and to highlight each country's progress. We often hear about an Africa that is ravaged by poverty, disease and conflict. There is another face to Africa, one of hope, ambition, energy, intelligence and achievement.

The wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone have been linked to the condition of urbanized youth. Recent research in southeastern Sierra Leone and northwestern Liberia suggests the rural context is of greater significance. The fighting was mainly in rural areas, involved mainly rural youth, and adapted itself to their local concerns. A model of war as the work of urban criminal gangs, reflecting local student politics in the 1970s and embraced internationally, is ripe for replacement by a model of war as agrarian revolt.

Los valiosos ejemplos presentados abarcan una serie de experiencias heterogéneas, desde el uso de tecnología WiFi (comunicación inalámbrica) en el caso de Huaral hasta la comunicación oral en Piura. Desde una red de información nacional con oficinas en regiones y provincias como el SIAG del Ministerio de Agricultura hasta una telecentro comunitario en Cotahuasi.

Includes recent political and policy developments, research findings and conclusions, a wider national picture, changing the discourse, a challenge to the private sector, South Africa faces a choice. Argues that South Africa’s current land reform model is largely informed by an outmoded vision of the role of agriculture and the rural areas in South African society, so is overloaded with expectations it cannot fulfil. Land reform is now predominantly an urban challenge.

A sample of 24 districts (1/3 of the Czech Republic) was used to evaluate the land market. Land prices depended on the area, culture and region of the plot. Sales of small plots (up to 1 ha) prevailed. These plots were usually purchased for non-agricultural use and their prices were many times higher than prices of large plots (above 5 ha) which are usually bought for agricultural purpose. Land market is not well developed, only 0.2-0.4% of the monitored area was sold each year. Compared with land prices in the west EU countries, land market prices in the Czech Republic are low.

Al inicio del Gobierno del Presidente Ricardo Lagos Escobar se convocó, bajo la conducción del Servicio Nacional de Turismo, Sernatur, al sector público y privado, a realizar un diagnóstico de la actividad turística y elaborar propuestas para su desarrollo, que culminó con la Agenda del Turismo.

South African president Mbeki has characterised the developmental challenge in his country in terms of integrating the structurally disconnected ‘two economies’. On the one hand the modern industrial, mining, agricultural, financial and services sector, and on the other the ‘third world economy’ found in those urban and rural areas where the majority of poor people live.This draft chapter challenges this characterisation and focuses on the rural dimensions of the ‘two economies’ debate.

The overall objective of this paper is to develop an appropriate conceptual and analytical framework to better understand how prospects for growth and poverty reduction can be stimulated in rural Honduras. We employ complementary quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis, driven by an asset-base approach. Emphasis on assets is appropriate given high inequalities in the distribution of productive assets among households and geographical areas in Honduras. Such inequalities are likely to constrain how the poor share in the benefits of growth, even under appropriate policy regimes.

"In Tanzania, as in many other developing countries, the conventional wisdom is that economic reforms may have stimulated economic growth, but that the benefits of this growth have been uneven, favoring urban households and farmers with good market access. This idea, although quite plausible, has rarely been tested empirically. In this paper, we develop a new approach to measuring trends in poverty and apply it to Tanzania in order to explore the distributional aspects of economic growth and the relationship between rural poverty and market access.

Since 1985, the Chinese government has given high priority to building roads, particularly high-quality roads that connect industrial centers. This report evaluates the contribution roads have made to poverty reduction and economic growth in China over the last two decades. It disaggregates road infrastructure into different classes to account for differences in their quality, and then estimates the impact of road investments on overall economic growth, agricultural growth, urban growth, urban poverty reduction, and rural poverty reduction.

This volume represents the outcome of a joint effort by IFPRI and Beaconhouse National University, Lahore, with support from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), to bring together some of the brightest and most influential minds in academia and policymaking circles to discuss the role of agriculture in poverty reduction in Pakistan. A day-long seminar took place on March 12, 2005 in Lahore, Pakistan.

This brief is based on Information and Communication Technologies for Development and Poverty Reduction: The Potential of Telecommunications, ed. Maximo Torero and Joachim von Braun (Johns Hopkins University Press and IFPRI, 2006) "The variety of views about ICTs reveals that their role in development is unclear, especially without convincing evidence of their impact—and little research has been conducted on the direct and indirect links between ICTs and poverty reduction.