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Africa Clean Cooking Energy Solutions

Srilata Kammila's picture

Well before sunrise in the small village of Msangani, Tanzania, Tunu ali Matekenya begins work at five, baking fresh bread.  Formerly an agricultural laborer, Tunu’s life has improved thanks to entrepreneurship training she received in using advanced cookstoves.

“The oven I am using is very efficient, it is easy to use and consumes less charcoal, which reduces the cost of baking...all this means more profit” Tunu exclaims proudly.

In many areas of the developing world, women and children spend hours foraging for wood and other fuel sources then prepare meals around open fires or primitive cookstoves in poorly ventilated homes. Not only does this present an obvious fire hazard, but it also means they are inhaling toxic fumes from incomplete combustion of toxins that are responsible for nearly 500,000 premature and preventable deaths annually in Sub-Saharan Africa.  The problem is particularly acute because 82 percent of the population depends on charcoal, dung, fuel wood, and forms of biomass for cooking purposes. 

The Case for Sharing Africa’s New Minerals Wealth With All Africans

Makhtar Diop's picture

In country after country in Sub-Saharan Africa, new discoveries of oil, natural gas and mineral deposits have been making headlines every other week it seems. When Ghana’s Jubilee oil field hits peak production in 2013, it will produce 120,000 barrels a day. Uganda’s Lake Albert Rift Basin fields could potentially produce even greater quantities. Billions of dollars a year could flow into Mozambique and Tanzania thanks to natural gas findings. And in Sierra Leone, mining iron ore in Tonkolili could boost GDP by a remarkable 25 percent in 2012.

My strong hope is that all the people living in these resource-rich African countries also get to share in this new oil and mineral wealth. So far, with one of few exceptions being Botswana, natural resources haven’t always improved the lives of people and their families. From what I see on my constant travels to the continent, economic growth in most resource-rich countries is not automatically translating into better health, education, and other key services for poor people.

Many resource-rich countries tend to gravitate towards the bottom of the global Human Development Index, which is a composite measure of life expectancy, education and income. 

One strikingly effective way to make sure that all people, especially the poorest, share in the new minerals prosperity is through safety nets and social protection programs. These are designed to protect vulnerable families and promote job opportunities among poor people who are able to work. This in turn makes communities stronger and more secure, while reducing painful inequalities between people.

Social protection programs are already central to poverty-fighting, higher growth national strategies across Africa, and have played a significant role reducing chronic poverty and helping families become more resilient in the face of setbacks such as unemployment, sudden illness, or natural disasters such as droughts or floods. These programs have also allowed families to invest in more livestock or grow more food, and increase their earnings. 

Weekly Wire: the Global Forum

Kalliope Kokolis's picture

These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.

Al Jazeera
Africa's digital election trackers

“Harry Kargbo barely slept the night before Sierra Leone's recent election for president. "I was so excited," he said. “I was up until 1 AM the night before. I was thinking, 'What will happen tomorrow? What will tomorrow look like?'"

Four hours later, Kargbo was up and out the door. Armed with nothing more than a mobile phone, he spent the next 10 hours navigating his way through a vehicle ban and police checkpoints, observing voting at polling stations around this West African country's capital, Freetown, and reporting on what he saw using the basic text messaging function on his phone."  READ MORE

Prospects Weekly: Flows into the bond and equity funds of developing countries rallied in the second half of this year

Flows into the bond and equity funds of developing countries rallied in the second half of this year amid stabilization of financial markets and quantitative easing in high income countries. Following a weak second quarter due to financial market tumult, growth has picked up in the developing world, notably in China – although output growth slowed in India and South Africa due to country-specific factors. The strengthening of developing-country activity (and imports) has been reflected in a modest improvement in high income country growth, but the continuing weakness in the Euro Area, fiscal uncertainties in the United States, and weak Japanese sales to China have limited the overall improvement.
Foreign portfolio flows to developing countries rallied in the second half of 2012. Capital flows into emerging market bond and equity funds have picked up since July, in line with the general improvement in global financial conditions. After $9.6 billion exited equity funds in May/June, some $10 billion flowed in during September-November. Overall, net inflows for 2012 through end November reached $22 billion. This is a marked improvement from $41.2 billion outflow during the first 11 months of 2011, but only a third of the inflows in 2010. In comparison, flows to emerging-market fixed-income (bond) funds were relatively stable in the May/June period. Inflows into bond funds have totaled $61.6 billion in the year to date, more than twice the $25.7 billion in 2011 and surpassing the $60.2 billion received during the same period in 2010.
GDP growth for developing countries as a whole picked up in the third quarter, but weakened in a few due to country-specific factors. Partly as a result of stimulus measures and bolstered by improving US growth (see below), GDP growth in China picked up to a 9.1% annualized rate in the third quarter, up from 8.2% in Q2 and 6.1% in Q1. Russia’s growth also picked up to 2.3% in Q3, supported by a rise in crude oil prices (itself reflecting the strengthening of global activity). The pace of expansion in Brazil also improved, but remained modest at 1.3% (versus 0.8% in Q2). In contrast, mining tensions caused South Africa’s growth to slow from 3.4% in Q2 to 1.2% in Q3. In India, annualized GDP growth slowed from 5.8% to 3.8% as a result of delayed monsoon rains and weak industrial activity. In other developing countries, output growth accelerated from 3.7% in Q2 to 4.3% in Q3. Overall, GDP growth in developing countries remains 4 percentage points higher than in high income countries.
Following several quarters of deceleration, growth in high income countries has also started to improve, partly in response to an increase in developing country imports. Reflecting both weak Euro Area domestic demand and accelerating developing country imports, rising net exports moderated the annualized pace of GDP decline in the Euro Area from –0.7% in the second quarter to –0.2% in the third quarter. In the US, GDP growth strengthened to 2.7% in Q3, from 1.3% in Q2, as the housing sector started to rebound after years of consolidation. The recovery would have been stronger had uncertainty over fiscal policy not contributed to a decline in investment spending. In Japan, an end to earlier stimulus measures plus weak demand from China (in part due to island-related disputes) led to a 3.5% contraction in Q3 GDP. In other high income countries GDP growth picked up modestly to 1.5% in Q3 from 0.4% in Q2.

Download the Prospects Weekly as PDF here.

From a simple seed in Kenya…

Juliet Pumpuni's picture

Weighing seeds, Juliet with Women's group leaders

In the Kenyan village of Naro Moro in the foothills of Mount Kenya near lush forests, I recently met Josephine Wanjiru and other members of a women’s group she leads. The transformation in their lives in the past two years has been remarkable. By planting trees and collecting previously discarded tree seeds during their vegetable crop low season, they have been able to use the seeds to make commercial products like bio-pesticides, soil conditioners, and moisturizers like the Cape Chestnut oil I brought home from my trip.

Josephine’s village is the home of Kenya’s growing biodiesel business run by the Help Self Help Centre (HSHC), a non-governmental organization supported by the Africa Energy Unit at the World Bank since 2010 as part of their Biomass Energy Initiative for Africa (BEIA). Through this initiative, we hope to demonstrate the feasibility of “social biofuels” – meaning small in scale, and both produced and consumed locally.

Weekly Wire: the Global Forum

Kalliope Kokolis's picture

These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.

Transparency International
2012 Corruption Perceptions Index

“The 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index Measures the perceived levels of public sector corruption in 176 countries and territories around the world.”  READ MORE

Mobile for Development
The Life Stories of base of pyramid mobile users in Africa and Asia

“If you use a mobile phone, and live on Earth, you probably have a prepaid SIM and live in the developing world [1]. But what do we know of you, your needs and habits of usage? The answer is ‘not a great deal’. And it’s been ‘not a great deal’ for a great deal of time.  It was with the hope of shining a modest light into this fug of ignorance that Mobile for Development visited South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya and Sri Lanka in June 2012 to find and speak to some of the world’s poorest to uncover firsthand testimony about how they used mobile and the impact it had on their lives.”  READ MORE

Longreads: Mobile Internet Traffic Gaining Fast, Polar Ice Melt Quantified, Africa’s Lions Declining, Best Small Ideas of 2012

Donna Barne's picture

Find a good longread on development? Tweet it to @worldbank with the hashtag #longreads.

Internet + trends + mobile, along with an image depicting the rapid rise of mobile Internet access in India, gained on Twitter and the Web after venture capitalist Mary Meeker shared the findings of her new Internet Trends report with Stanford University students December 3.  A key finding of the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers report—an update to one released in March—is that, “Mobile traffic is growing so fast globally that in some places it has already surpassed desktop traffic,” says CNET. Meeker also notes several ways we are re-imagining our lives because of rapid technological development and Internet access. Polar ice melt is the topic of a new research paper in Science, A Reconciled Estimate of Ice-Sheet Mass Balance, containing the “most definitive” estimate so far of polar ice melt over the last 20 years (11mm), says the BBC, noting that “sea-level rise is now among the most pressing questions of our time.”  Africa’s lion population has declined to as low as 32,000, down from nearly 100,000 in 1960, says a study led by Duke University researchers and funded by National Geographic’s Big Cats Initiative. In a short overview, Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment also highlights the continent’s rapid loss of savannah ecosystems where lions live. Small innovations are “quietly changing the world in big ways,” says author Tina Rosenberg in Foreign Policy. Such ideas include “pay for performance” to get kids in school or keep young men out of jail, or helping people with cash or vouchers rather than food aid or refugee camps.

In Windhoek, Integrated Urban Water Management is Key to Closing the Water Loop

The city of Windhoek is probably best known for the fact that it is the world pioneer of drinking water reclamation from purified sewage effluent.

Windhoek lies in the heart of Namibia, the most arid Country in Sub Saharan Africa. All existing water resources are optimally utilized in a number of different ways. Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM) lies at the heart of these approaches, both in using water that is fit for purpose and in diversifying water sources.

Climate Lessons from a Hotter Arab World

Rachel Kyte's picture

Photo credit: Curt Carnemark/World Bank

This week in Doha, the marble corridors of the Qatar National Convention Center resonate with voices from around the world. Over half way through the UN Climate Change Conference, as ministers arrive and the political stakes pick up, a sense of greater urgency in the formal negotiations is almost palpable. But in the corridors, negotiations are already leading to deals and dreams and action on the ground.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened the discussions by saying we need optimism, because without optimism there are no results. He reminded us all that Superstorm Sandy was a tragic awakening. He reiterated the call for a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, a global agreement and 100 billion in climate finance by 2020.

Meanwhile our focus was firmly on the region ...

Service with a smile: A new growth engine for poor countries

Ejaz Ghani's picture

This post was originally published in Voxeu.org.

Services have long been the main source of growth in rich countries. We argue that services are now the main source of growth in poor countries as well. We present evidence that services may provide the easiest and fastest route out of poverty for many poor countries.

For more than 200 years, it was argued that economic development and growth was associated with growth of the labour-intensive manufacturing sector (Baumol 1967, Kaldor 1966, UNIDO 2009). Services were considered as menial, low-skilled, and low-innovation (McCredie and Bubner 2010). But today, services can be among the most dynamic sectors in an economy. The policy question is whether this is true even in poor countries.

Weekly Wire: the Global Forum

Kalliope Kokolis's picture

These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.

ICFJ
African News Innovation Winners Focus on Citizen Engagement, Investigative Tools and Whistleblower Security

“Twenty African media innovators will receive a total of $1 million to develop digital projects that improve the quality of news across the continent, as part of the first African News Innovation Challenge (ANIC).

Many recipients concentrated on enhancing citizen journalism, investigative reporting and source protection.

ANIC is the largest fund for digital journalism experimentation in Africa. It is designed to spur solutions to the business, distribution and workplace challenges facing the African news industry. The contest was organized by the African Media Initiative (AMI), the continent’s largest association of media owners and operators, and managed by Knight International Journalism Fellow Justin Arenstein. The fellowships are administered by the International Center for Journalists.”  READ MORE

Ready, Set, Hack!

Sanitation Hackathon Team's picture

After months of preparation, the Sanitation Hackathon weekend is upon us.

In dozens of countries around the world, IT and sanitation experts will join forces for an intensive brainstorming and programming marathon to develop innovative applications for some of the world’s sanitation challenges.

Weekly Wire: The Global Forum

Kalliope Kokolis's picture

These are some of the views and reports relevant to our readers that caught our attention this week.

CIMA
Mapping Digital Media

“The Mapping Digital Media project examines the global opportunities and risks created by the transition from traditional to digital media. Covering 60 countries, the project includes data on how these changes affect news about political, economic, and social affairs.  Visit the Open Society Foundations’ website to see the full version of each country’s report.

CIMA worked with the Open Society Foundations to identify the most important digital media indicators in the series of reports. The mapping tool allows for the visualization of these indicators from each report and enables the comparison of digital media penetration in various countries. Please note that some data from the reports has been recalculated to ensure that comparable data is presented in the map.”  READ MORE

Linda Raftree
ICT for WASH and public service delivery

“In June, two organisations focussed on using ICT (Information and Communications Technology) in the water and sanitation sector joined forces in Cape Town. SeeSaw, a social enterprise that customises ICT to support sanitation and water providers and iComms, a University of Cape Town research unit (Information for Community Oriented Mu nicipal Services) co-hosted a two day event to look at how ICT tools are changing the way that public services function in developing countries.

There are growing expectations that harnessing ICT intelligently can bring about radical improvements in the way that health, education and other sectors function, particularly in developing countries. SeeSaw and iComms wanted to look at this in more detail – and to build on the open sharing of experience to provide general principles to those planning to harness ICT for public service delivery. Their overarching goal is to help practitioners cut through much of the complexity and hype surrounding ICT usage and give them a robust set of guidelines with which to plan and negotiate partnerships and projects on the ground.”  READ MORE

What Does Water Look Like in a 4-Degrees World?

Julia Bucknall's picture

Turn Down the Heat report

All climate negotiations have been based on staying below 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures. Yet it looks increasingly unlikely that that will be possible. A new report, Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided, suggests that there is a 40 percent chance that we will reach 4°C by 2100 even if we stick to the agreed emission reduction commitments.

What does water look like in a 4°C world?

Put simply: it's complex. Water is a complicated system and one of the major impacts of climate change is the effect on the hydrological (water) cycle.  These impacts will coincide with an unprecedented increase in demand for water because of population and economic growth.


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