Tanzania

More Jobs. It is possible!

*Street names in Accra, Ghana. Photo credit: Ben Welle/ Flickr CC*

When I used to work in Rwanda, I lived on a small street in Kigali. Every time I invited friends over, I would tell them to “walk past the Embassy, look out for the Church, and then continue to the house with the black gate.” The day a street sign was erected on my street was a game changer.

So how do more than two million citizens of Accra navigate the busy city without the help of street names? While some street names are commonly known, most streets do not have any official name, street sign or house number. Instead, people usually refer to palm trees, speed bumps, street vendors, etc.

But, what happens when the palm tree is cut or when the street vendor changes the location?

The absence of street names poses not only challenges for orientation, but also for property tax collection, postal services, emergency services, and the private sector. Especially, new economy companies, such as Amazon or Uber, depend on street addressing systems and are eager to cater to market demands of a growing middle class.

To address these challenges, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), financed by the World Bank’s second Land Administration Project , is implementing a street addressing and property numbering system in Accra. Other Metropolitan areas received funding from other World Bank-funded projects for similar purposes.

Look no further than Uber, Airbnb...

“You can’t hold back time,” goes the saying (and the song). Indeed, the Laws of Nature dictate that people and societies get older and older, whether we like it or not.

But let me pose a question: are aging societies doomed to experience stagnation or a decline in living standards? Some might believe so, but I would argue that it is possible to address the realities of changing demographics that come from aging – through bold adaptive action!

Let’s harness the data revolution to promote agriculture and create jobs

تشهد بعض مناطق جامايكا وخاصة المدن الكبرى مثل كينجستون ومونتيجو باي من ارتفاع مستويات الجريمة والعنف. فإذا كتبت في خانة البحث في جوجل "ما هي أكبر مشاكل جامايكا"، سترى أن النتائج الخمسة الأولى عن الجريمة.

Can Dar es Salaam become the next global model on transit-oriented development?

The World Bank is supporting an increase in rural jobs and investment while promoting sustainable land management to conserve Mozambique’s natural wealth. Photo: Andrea Borgarello/World Bank

As my plane lands in Maputo, I am welcomed home by blankets of turquoise waters edged in creamy ribbons of sand, and swaths of greens in every shade, from scrubby mangroves to unique coastal forests endemic to Maputaland. But I also see rapidly sprawling human settlements and degraded areas where forests once flourished.

Secondary towns for migration and jobs: What makes a town a town and why it matters

It is possible to boost opportunities for Tanzania’s youth

The slow economic growth in 2013 and an equally discouraging forecast for 2014 will mark three years of unsatisfactory economic performance in Latin America. The truth, however, is that these results have confirmed performance that has been mediocre since the market reforms. Between 1990 and 2013, GDP growth was just 3.3% per year, which compares very unfavorably with the rate of 5.5% achieved between 1950 and 1980, during the State-led industrialization era.

Secondary towns for migration and jobs: Creating the action space

Also available in: French

Energy storage is a crucial tool for enabling the effective integration of renewable energy and unlocking the benefits of the local generation of clean resilient energy supply. Photo credits: IFC

For over a hundred years, electrical grids have been built with the assumption that electricity has to be generated, transmitted, distributed, and used in real time because energy storage was not economically feasible.
This is now beginning to change.

VGGT: The global guidelines to secure land rights for all

A man holds his family's "red book," the land use rights certificate in Vietnam, which includes both his and his wife's names. (Photo by Chau Doan / World Bank)

Ground-breaking, far-reaching , forests, and fisheries were endorsed five years ago by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), based at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome.

Today, the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure The guidelines are pioneering – outlining principles and practices that governments can refer to when making laws and administering land, fisheries, and forests rights. Ultimately, they aim to promote food security and sustainable development by improving secure access to land, fisheries, and forests, as well as protecting the rights of millions of often very poor people.

Sounds simple, maybe even jargony, but no – they are concrete, with real impacts. All of a sudden, we had an internationally negotiated soft law or a set of guidelines on (land) tenure navigating successfully through the global web of interests on land, reaching a common ground. The consensus at the CFS was further strengthened by the endorsement of the VGGT by the G20, Rio+ 20, the United Nations General Assembly, and the Francophone Assembly of Parliamentarians.

[Read: Land Tenure: What have we learned four years after approving a set of international land tenure guidelines?]

This journey started with an inclusive consultation process started by the FAO in 2009, and finalized through intergovernmental negotiations. Importantly, no interest group – governments, CSOs, academia, private sector – felt left behind, and the States were engaged in word-by-word review of the guidelines.

This can be seen in the result. The VGGT’s power stems from the consensus on its principles that States were to:

Recognize and respect all legitimate tenure right holders and their rights;
Protect tenure right holders against the arbitrary loss of their tenure rights; and that
Women and girls [were to] have equal tenure rights and access to land.

And the list goes on.

Canada and the World Bank: Empowering women and girls is the best way to build a better world for all

A woman tends to plants in a nursery in Sri Lanka. © Lakshman Nadaraja/World Bank

We face global challenges on an unprecedented scale: climate change, natural disasters, poverty, water scarcity, food insecurity, global displacement, conflict and violence. These are not the kinds of challenges that will go away on their own—they feed off one another and flourish. The world is responding with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which lay out a road map to building a more inclusive, peaceful and prosperous world—a better world.