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Law and Order: Countering the threat of crime in Tanzania

Waly Wane's picture

Let's think together: Every Sunday the World Bank in Tanzania in collaboration with The Citizen wants to stimulate your thinking by sharing data from recent official surveys in Tanzania and ask you a few questions.

For many Tanzanians the fear of crime is a daily reality, especially for those living in urban areas. It negatively affects their quality of life as it makes them feel insecure and vulnerable as they go about otherwise normal activities. A few facts:

- In 2010/11 about 390,000 households (four per cent) reported that they had been severely affected by hijacking, robbery, burglary or assault (over the previous year).
- Residents of urban areas are about three times more likely than those in rural areas to be victims of these crimes.

Dying from malaria in the market for lemons

Markus Goldstein's picture

We know malaria is a big problem and we know fake drugs are a big problem.   What do you get when you put them together?   Bad news.   A recent paper by Martina Bjorkman-Nyqvist, Jakob Svensson and David Yanagizawa-Drott (ungated version here) shows how bad this problem is in Uganda, and provides an innovative way to deal with it.

Healthier Workplaces = Healthy Profits

Patricio V. Marquez's picture

The debate in the United States on how to change a health system that is geared to treat illnesses to one that focuses on preventing people from getting sick stirred my curiosity on how companies can improve employee health.  After all, employees spend most of their waking hours at the workplace.

The Costs of Inaction

Shanta's picture

Sudhir Anand and co-authors recently published a fascinating book, The Costs of Inaction, which looks at cost-benefit analysis in a different way. All cost-benefit analysis requires the analyst to specify a counterfactual—how the world would have evolved in the absence of the project of program.  This is critical.  An evaluation in Kenya included increased use of cellphones as an indicator of project success — neglecting the fact that cellphone use in neighboring villages was just as widespread. 

In many cases, the counterfactual could be “doing nothing.”  For a number of important areas such as health and education in Africa, The Costs of Inaction calculates the costs of doing nothing in terms of lives lost or under-educated children. 

Bloomberg, Kim on Need for Greener, More Efficient Transport in Cities

Donna Barne's picture

Read this post in Español, Français

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg speak outside the Transforming Transportation 2013 conference.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg weighed in January 18 on what it will take to shape the future of cities — and cut pollution, road deaths, commute times, and poverty.

A large part of the answer: greener, more efficient and cost-effective urban transportation that is designed to move people, not cars.

“We have to start looking at other ways to move people. Traffic does hurt your economy,” Mayor Bloomberg said at the 10th Annual Transforming Transportation conference in Washington, D.C., hosted by the World Bank and EMBARQ.

With 90 percent of city air pollution caused by vehicles, finding transportation solutions also will help confront emissions that drive climate change, Dr. Kim added.

Africa: Using ICTs for transformational development

Tim Kelly's picture

Africa is advancing by leaps and bounds in adoption and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the private and public sectors. A new report, “eTransform Africa”, shows how innovations that began in Africa – like the use of dual SIM card cellular phones or using mobile technologies for remittance payments – are now spreading across the continent and beyond.

Has the African Growth Miracle Already Happened?

Shanta's picture

Most of the literature about Africa’s growth, “Africa Rising”, “Lions on the Move”, etc., refer to the present or the future.  An oft-quoted World Bank report said, “Africa could be on the brink of an economic takeoff, much like China was 30 years ago and India 20 years ago.” 

Meanwhile, Alwyn Young has recently published a paper that claims that per-capita consumption on the continent has been growing at 3.4-3.7 percent a year for the last two decades—about three to four times the growth rates documented in other studies. Instead of using national accounts data (which, as we know, suffer from several deficiencies), Alwyn adopts the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), which calculate the households’ ownership of assets and other indicators of well-being (ownership of a car or bicycle; material of the house floor; birth, death or illness of a child, etc.). 

What is the best way to save one million lives?

David Evans's picture

Last October, the Government of Nigeria committed to save one million lives by 2015 by increasing access to cost-effective health services and commodities, a bold goal.

Crucially, the Federal Ministry of Health is coupling the scale-up of services and commodities with a focus on knowledge, using rigorous impact evaluation strategically and systematically across their programs (in partnership with the World Bank’s Development Impact Evaluation Unit and the Gates Foundation).  Each evaluation adapts promising evidence from elsewhere in the world to fit the Nigerian context, letting the Government and its partners see which interventions are most effective in saving lives.

Perilous pregnancies: How to improve maternal health in Tanzania?

Isis Gaddis's picture

Let's think together: Every Sunday the World Bank in Tanzania in collaboration with The Citizen wants to stimulate your thinking by sharing data from recent official surveys in Tanzania and ask you a few questions.

Pregnancy and childbirth can be a tremendously exciting time for a family if the expectant mother and her unborn child benefit from quality medical services and the baby is delivered in a safe environment. 

However, it can also be a traumatizing experience if the mother loses her life during childbirth or if the newborn is sick or dies. 

In Tanzania many mothers and mothers-to-be are dying young and unnecessarily as illustrated by the following statistics:

Human Development and Inequality of Opportunity: a rejoinder to Ferreira

Adam Wagstaff's picture

My colleague and (I hope still) friend, Chico Ferreira recently took the trouble to write a comment on my earlier LTD post on measuring inequality of opportunity in the context of human development. Early on in his comment, Chico also paid me the compliment of a being a “clever guy”, which was nice until I read on and found that while he agreed with some of what I said there was a lot he didn’t like. Now Chico is a really clever guy, and this is an area he knows a lot about. So I realize I’m treading on thin ice when I say I’m not completely convinced about his ripostes. But let me take the risk. Chico’s not just super-clever – he’s also very nice. So if the ice cracks and I fall in, I think there’s a good chance he’ll pull me out.

Haiti: top five wishes for 2013

Hasan Tuluy's picture

También disponible en español y francés

Three years after the earthquake, Haiti has made gains in key development areas including education, the economic environment and managing the risk of natural hazards. In this video blog, World Bank regional Vice President Hasan Tuluy shares his top five wishes for Haiti in 2013.

City Transport: It’s About Moving People, Not Vehicles

Rachel Kyte's picture

Read this post in عربي

The number of vehicles on the world’s roads is on pace to double to about 1.7 billion by 2035. Pair that with a rapidly urbanizing population – six in 10 of us are likely to live in cities by 2030 – and the world’s cities have a transport problem in the making.

It’s also an opportunity, one that cities, particularly the fast-growing urban centers in developing countries, must take now.

Those that build efficient, inclusive urban transport systems can connect their people with jobs, health care, and education. They can reduce congestion, and they can limit carbon emissions that are contributing to climate change.

Some thoughts on human development, equal opportunity, and universal coverage

Adam Wagstaff's picture

I was asked recently to advise on some ongoing work on human development, equal opportunities, and universal coverage. The work was building on previous work undertaken by the World Bank in its Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region that had developed a new index known as the Human Opportunity Index (HOI).

The core idea underlying the HOI isn’t new. The argument is that inequalities are inequitable insofar as they’re the result of circumstances beyond the individual’s control (inequality in opportunity), but not if they reflect factors that are within the individual’s control. The object of the exercise is to separate empirically the two.

Growing Older, Working Longer

Tehani Ariyaratne's picture

Courtesy Centre for Poverty AnalysisOn Jan. 7 from 2-4 p.m., there will be a live chat on Sri Lanka's aging population at facebook.com/worldbanksrilanka. Tehani Ariyaratne, from the Centre for Poverty Analysis, will be joining the chat. Here, she discusses her recent work on the subject.

The Centre for Poverty Analysis recently put the finishing touches on a photo documentary portraying an oft-forgotten side in the discussion on demographic transitions and the elderly: productivity.

In Sri Lanka, an individual above the age of 60 is considered 'elderly'. Our documentary focussed on individuals in two districts, Hambantota and Batticaloa, and captures a diverse, rural elderly population. During the course of our fieldwork, we met and spoke with many individuals about their ideas regarding the benefits of and constraints to maintaining an active lifestyle.

Old and vulnerable: The status of Tanzania’s elders

Jacques Morisset's picture

Let's think together: Every Sunday the World Bank in Tanzania in collaboration with The Citizen  wants to stimulate your thinking by sharing data from recent official surveys in Tanzania and ask you a few questions.

Growing old is almost a universal dream. Over the past two centuries, life expectancy in Western Europe increased from 32 (in 1800) to over 80 years in 2011. This unprecedented leap in human history came as the combination of technological advances in medicine, improved living conditions, and better nutrition, among other factors. However, old age is also often accompanied with a general deterioration in physical capacities, proneness to disease and sickness, and the inability to engage in economic activity. This heightens the risk of poverty and insecurity thereby requiring societies to find mechanisms to support their elderly population.


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