English | Español | Français | عربي | Русский | 中文 |

Google+ page of the World Bank

|

|

world bank

The Costs of Being Landlocked: A Road Trip in Africa

Ali Zafar's picture

The Ouagadougou-Accra-Tema corridor, a road stretching from Ouagadougou in West Africa’s Burkina Faso through Ghana’s bustling capital city Accra and onto the country’s port city Tema, is one of Africa’s most well-known corridors. In October, we joined Albert, a 50-year-old driver from Burkina Faso, on a 750 kilometer journey to highlight the high economic costs faced by landlocked countries and the cumbersome border crossings that impede trade.

The journey, which should have taken seven hours by car, took us 17 hours, 1 border crossing and 20 checkpoints.

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.

A Look Back at 2012: Year in Review

Maureen Hoch's picture

Read this post in Français

As 2012 draws to a close, we're looking back at some key moments in the Bank's work this year. From financial inclusion to food prices to #whatwillittake and more, explore this slideshow for our Year in Review.

To view this slideshow on a tablet or mobile device, click here.

A Bad Apple in the Classroom? Know It To Change It

Barbara Bruns's picture

Recently, I was part of the Global Economic Symposium held in Rio de Janeiro. This year’s theme was Growth through Education and Innovation; I presented as part of a panel entitled Effective Investments in Education.

My presentation focussed on the fact that a growing and compelling body of research shows that teacher effectiveness varies widely - even across classrooms in the same grade in the same school. Getting assigned to a bad teacher has not only immediate, but also long term, consequences for student learning, college completion and long-term income.

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.

Mexico: An opportunity for deeper co-operation

Hasan Tuluy's picture

Also available in español

The World Bank Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean, Hasan Tuluy, is in Mexico for the inauguration of the new government. In this video blog, Tuluy explains how Mexico and the World Bank will continue to work together to build a more prosperous society that benefits everyone.

World AIDS Day 2012: Looking to the Future, Learning From the Past

Jim Yong Kim's picture

Read this post in Español, Français, عربي

Although I have committed much of my career to the global fight against HIV and AIDS, this year's World AIDS Day is a special one for me in two ways. First, there's the remarkable news from UNAIDS that more than 8 million people globally are now on treatment, and 25 countries have achieved more than a 50 percent decline in HIV prevalence. With this progress, I am more optimistic than ever about our ability to end AIDS.

As the US government’s new blueprint for an AIDS-free generation demonstrates, today we have the science, the knowledge, the experience, and the tools to fight the epidemic. I was particularly happy to see that the blueprint included multi-year, sustainability strategies and that it stressed the need to support country leadership. With that leadership, and with a long-term plan owned by countries, these efforts can succeed.

Jim Yong Kim Visits Quake Reconstruction Sites in China’s Sichuan Province

YUNXI TOWN, Yantang County, China—More than three years after a devastating earthquake hit Sichuan Province, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim toured four reconstruction sites, including stops that looked at road construction, a maternal and child health center, and an economic development zone.

After talking to several villagers in Yunxi's town square, during which Kim asked residents about the earthquake and its aftermath, Kim gives his impressions from the trip in the video below.

Getting healthcare to work better in Samburu County

Kavita Watsa's picture

As our sturdy Land Cruiser inched its way down a precipitous dirt track, trying to descend from a high ridge into the Rift Valley, I wondered what might happen if we had an accident here in the heart of Kenya’s remote Samburu County. Mobile signals had faded soon after we left the town of Maralal several hours before. We could have tried to walk back, but would have been very unlikely to make it before nightfall. Luckily, after a few mishaps and some serious jolting, we arrived at our destination in the valley—lonely Suyan manyata, whose distant circular outline we had seen from the ridge.

Talking to some of the women in the manyata, I realized that the ground that we had covered to get to them was nothing. We had done it in good health in a vehicle built for difficult terrain. As they told us what life was like in their village, my heart quailed at the thought of enduring a bumpy ride in a run-down van if one were pregnant or in labor with complications—if at all transport could be obtained. Just a few days ago, a child had died here of malaria, the women said. How did they usually get help, I asked. “We send our fastest runner 18 kilometers to the nearest dispensary,” said Ma Toraeli, a grandmother in the village. “From there someone comes to help us”. Health workers also visited the village from time to time, she said, to immunize babies and perform other routine checks.

Immunization seemed high on people’s minds in Samburu. Later that day, we visited Barsaloi, a larger village with its own government dispensary and another run by Catholic nuns. The two stood side by side, with a well-worn path between them. There I met another grandmother, Agnes, who had brought an infant girl, Salini, to be immunized, although her record showed that she was early and didn’t need this service yet. But while Stephen, the clinical officer at the government dispensary, was examining the baby and we were on the subject of immunization, the district head nurse showed us how vaccines were stored at the required temperature in the two-room government dispensary without power supply.

A Look at the #whatwillittake Wall in Tokyo

Mehreen Arshad Sheikh's picture

Our global conversation on “What Will It Take to End Poverty” has been woven throughout the 2012 Annual Meetings this week. As part of the effort, we asked people attending the meetings in Tokyo to pick up a postcard and write down their thoughts about what it will take to end poverty.

Jim Yong Kim on ‘Restoring Growth, Spreading Prosperity’ as Annual Meetings Open

Donna Barne's picture

Read this post in Español, Français

A few weeks ago, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim started a global conversation on what it will take to end poverty, and invited the public to send him feedback. On the opening day of the 2012 Annual Meetings in Tokyo, he shared some of his own ideas for tackling the problem during a live interview with the Wall Street Journal.

Dr. Kim sat down with Jacob Schlesinger, Tokyo bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires., to discuss a variety of concerns--from the need to create jobs and find solutions to climate change, to Dr. Kim’s pledge to ramp up efforts to achieve the Bank’s longstanding goal of eliminating extreme poverty.

On the latter topic, a woman from Ghana asked, “What will happen if poverty ends? What next?”

Let’s Turn the Lights on Across Africa

Makhtar Diop's picture

I’m in Tokyo this week for the World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings and on Friday I will open the Bank’s global conference to look more closely at the serious energy challenge facing Africa.

Consider this stunning fact―only 1 in 3 Africans has access to electricity on the continent.

And that is why too little electricity is one of the biggest challenges I see standing in the way of Africa achieving steadily higher growth rates, better education for its children and teenagers, good quality health services that work, farms and agribusinesses that can grow enough cheap nutritious food for Africans to eat, just to name some of the transformational priorities which can happen when we turn the lights on across Africa.

I confess I am passionate about lighting up homes, schools, businesses, clinics, libraries, and parliaments across the continent. As a child growing up in Senegal, I knew first-hand about power shortages. More power for Africans will allow them to transform their living standards and turn the continent’s growth into tangible benefits for all.

Energy security is a key priority for my work as World Bank Vice President for Africa, and my team is moving ahead relentlessly to put power infrastructure in place to plug regional communities into cross-border power pools, more irrigated land to grow food and create jobs, galvanize more trade and commerce within the region, and to unlock all the other development potential that electrical power makes possible.

The Reality About the Land Grab Issue and the World Bank Group

Rachel Kyte's picture

Read this post in Español, Français, عربي

Today in Tokyo, on the side of our annual meetings where food security is a major issue being discussed, I had a few minutes to join Oxfam's session about land in developing countries.

I made the point that one of the best ways to help manage pressure on land is through the Bank Group's staying engaged in agriculture, working to build good practices and capacity in countries to manage investments better. As a result, we are saying no to Oxfam's call for a freeze on our work.

In fact we have ramped up our investments in agriculture in recent years, helping smallholders increase productivity, reduce waste, and get clear land tenure, and we want to do more. It was reassuring to hear from Oxfam directly that the Bank is not the primary target of their efforts. That's good because the vast majority of our agricultural investments help poor farmers grow food and involve no land purchase.

Who’s writing what in the ‘Knowledge Bank’? And is it being used?

Adam Wagstaff's picture

An organization with ‘motor company’ in its name might produce several types of vehicle (cars, trucks, etc.) in several variations (models) at several different plants, and might sell these vehicles in several different regions of the world. The company wouldn’t last long if it didn’t know how many of each model – and at what cost – it was producing in each plant, and how many – and at what price – it was selling in each region. In the World Bank – where we like to think of ourselves as the ‘knowledge bank’ – we produce several types of document in several vice presidencies (VPUs) and we make them available in hard copy and in electronic format in all regions of the world. Yet as far as I know we don’t systematically track how many of each document type each VPU produces, let alone how successful each is in terms of sales and downloads. We have these data for World Bank books, but they’re a small fraction of our overall document output.

The lack of data ought to make it hard to think about how the institution might do things differently in its knowledge work to serve developing countries better. What type of Bank documents are produced most? And which are used most? Which VPUs are the big producers of knowledge? Which document types are downloaded most? Which VPUs produce the most downloaded documents?

How do we manage the environment without compromising efforts to reduce poverty?

Idah Z. Pswarayi-Riddihough's picture

I always say, environmental management is woven into something bigger, much bigger than simply saying “Let’s do some good, let’s not pollute.” For me, it’s a question of how we encourage the development boom underway in Africa today, while still keeping our eyes focused on environmental management.

Photo credit: Jonathan Ernst/World Bank In the World Bank’s Africa Region, we are working on the belief that we can find a way to support sustainable development that combines the least amount of environmental damage with the best desirable outcome possible. Put simply, we can “green” growth and make it more inclusive.

The way to do this is to weave environment into all development programs. We believe that development is key to reducing poverty and improving livelihoods in Africa.

For example, let’s say that you are planning to build a really big road going through a national park. This is an opportunity for all stakeholders, government officials, community members, donors, NGOs, and others to gather and ask themselves not just how this road will improve economic growth, but what is the future of this national park? Will this road provide poachers with new access to pristine woodlands and endangered wildlife?

In a new report, "Enhancing Competitiveness and Resilience in Africa", we lay out a new approach to environmental management that makes it the core of everything we do. This means that when we think about a project or program in any sector, we also think about how it will impact the environment.

Pages