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WBG president announces new MDGs 4/5 funding mechanism

Carolyn Reynolds's picture

SF-LA004 World Bank

Today, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim announced a special funding mechanism to enable donors to scale up their funding to meet the urgent needs related to Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5, leveraging the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank's fund for the poorest. 

Dr. Kim announced the special funding mechanism during his remarks at the Every Woman, Every Child event at the UN General Assembly.

His remarks, as prepared for delivery, are available on the World Bank's website (http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/2012/09/25/world-bank-president-kim-every-woman-every-child-un-general-assembly).
 

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Country policy and institutional assessment: How well are African countries doing?

Punam Chuhan-Pole's picture

Every year, the World Bank’s country teams and sector experts assess the quality of IDA countries’ policy and institutional framework across 16 dimensions to measure their strenght and track progess.  

The latest country policy and institutional assessment (CPIA) results show that despite difficult global economic conditions, the quality of policies and institutions in a majority of Sub-Saharan African countries remained stable or improved in 2011.

DOWNLOAD the indicators here: www.worldbank.org/Africa/CPIA

For several countries the policy environment is the best in recent years. Of the 38 African countries with CPIA scores, 13 saw an improvement in the 2011 overall score by at least 0.1. Twenty countries saw no change, and five witnessed a decline of 0.1 or more. The overall CPIA score for the region was unchanged at 3.2.  

In short, despite a challenging global economic environment, African countries continued to pursue policies aligned with growth and poverty reduction. 

Celebrating 25 Years of the Montreal Protocol - and Looking Ahead

Rachel Kyte's picture

Ozone depletion reached its highest level in 2006, NASA monitoring found.
The world’s leaders set a high bar when they adopted the Montreal Protocol, which has helped protect the Earth’s protective ozone layer for the last 25 years. Even with its ambitious goals, the treaty won universal ratification – 197 parties have agreed to legally binding reduction targets to phase out ozone-depleting gases, and they have stuck to them.

 

The result: we, as a global community, have almost completely phased out the use of 97 substances that were depleting the ozone layer.

 

It’s a success worth celebrating, but we can’t rest on our laurels. We phased out CFCs, once used for cooling most refrigerators on the planet, but some of their replacement gases have become a climate change problem we still have to contend with.

Sub-Saharan Africa: How can we avoid the disease silos trap?

Patricio V. Marquez's picture




While much of the health focus in sub-Saharan Africa has been directed toward communicable diseases, particularly HIV/AIDS, there has been less acknowledgement that non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are a growing problem. These diseases already account for about 30% of deaths and are expected to become the leading cause of ill health and death by 2030 (see chart).

Measuring universal health coverage – plus ça change?

Adam Wagstaff's picture

In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a growing clamor for a global commitment to universal health coverage (UHC). You might have seen the recent special issue of the Lancet on “the struggle for UHC”. Inevitably, accompanying this clamor, there’s been a lot of wracking of brains on how to measure progress toward UHC. With the excitement of a new political agenda, there’s understandably a desire to carve out a new measurement agenda too. While not wanting dampen people’s enthusiasm for the UHC cause, I would like us to reflect whether on the measurement agenda we’re building enough on what’s been done before.

Child mortality declines sharply across regions

Julia Ross's picture

New child mortality estimates show that substantial progress has been made towards achieving Millennium Development Goal 4. The estimates were released today by the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation, which includes UNICEF, WHO, the World Bank and United Nations Population Division.

Paralegals and Social Accountability: Who knew?

Shamiela Mir's picture

Social Accountability is getting more and more innovative these days. A recent event organized by Justice for the Poor (J4P) showcased a pilot program in Sierra Leone where a group of development practitioners are exploring new ideas on social accountability and how legal empowerment tools, such as community paralegals can play a complementary role by helping communities navigate the murky waters of administrative accountability and hold the government and the healthcare service providers accountable.

SAR DM Grantees speak out about their winning projects on Nutrition

Phoebe Folger's picture

Photo credit: DFID - UK Department for International Development's photostream on FlickrIn light of its increasing mandate to address undernutrition in South Asia, the World Bank, with its partners, held a South Asia Regional Development Marketplace (SAR DM) on Nutrition under the theme: “Family and Community Approaches to Improve Infant and Young Child Nutrition.”

The SAR DM on Nutrition supported the testing of innovative ideas across South Asia to deliver improved nutrition services to pregnant and lactating women and children under two.

Kenya’s education dividend

Wolfgang Fengler's picture

Despite positive news and the talk of an African “renaissance,” many still doubt whether the continent is ready for take-off. Rapid population growth and the resulting “youth bulge” remain major concerns in a context of widespread un(der)employment. How can a country like Kenya create one million jobs each year, just to accommodate new entrants into the labor force? 

 

But young people don’t just need jobs, they also create them. Therefore, what matters most is to make sure that the education system delivers the skills needed in emerging economies, and incubates entrepreneurs. In turn, as people become more educated and healthier, they will have fewer children. This is already happening: As Kenya continues to welcome about a million new citizens each year, family size is slowly declining. 

Better Nutrition Through Information

Markus Goldstein's picture

In honor of Labor Day here in the US, I want to talk about a recent nutrition paper by Emla Fitzsimons, Bansi Malde, Alice Mesnard and Marcos Vera-Hernandez.   This paper, “Household Responses to Information on Child Nutrition,” is one with a twist – they look not only at nutrition outcomes, but they also try and figure out where these might be coming from – and hence also look at labor supply.  

Alta do preço dos alimentos: chegou a hora de agir de acordo com o que se prega?

Marie Chantal Messier's picture

Also available in English, Español

Não se pode contestar que o alto preço dos alimentos está sendo muito prejudicial às famílias, às empresas e aos governos na América Latina por exacerbar os efeitos potencialmente catastróficos nos orçamentos das pessoas e da economia como um todo.

Rising food prices: time to put your money where your mouth is?

Marie Chantal Messier's picture

Also available in Portuguese, Español

There is no arguing that high food prices are taking a heavy toll on Latin America’s families, business and governments, fueling ripple effects on people’s budgets and the economy as a whole.

But behind the cold hard numbers of price increases, shrinking budgets and inflationary fears, the simple truth is high food prices can kill –or severely impair- people, especially kids from underprivileged environments.

Timing Is Everything: Are We Heading to a New Global Food Price Crisis?

Jose Cuesta's picture

Read this post in Español, Français

Today the world seems to hold its breath again amidst the sudden hike in food prices caused by a historical drought in the US and lack of rain in Eastern Europe.[1] It is a thorny task to predict whether the very recent increases in food prices will unfold into magnitude of the crises seen in 2007-08 and again in 2010-2011: differences between now and then in the price of energy, a critical driver of food prices, give a reason for optimism; as does the hope that governments now better understand the painful consequences of some panic policies that have been put in place during previous episodes. On the other hand, months of volatility in global food prices, low food stocks and food security crisis alerts in parts of East and West Africa all paint a gloomy picture.

América Latina: Deveria a febre global de preços dos alimentos nos dar calafrios?

Willem Janssen's picture

Also available in English, Español

Com a nova escalada de preços dos alimentos, a terceira em cinco anos, também aumenta a preocupação com a segurança alimentar global. Imediatamente, três perguntas vêm à mente: Por que isso está acontecendo? Como isso afeta a América Latina e o Caribe? O que podemos fazer a respeito disso?

Latin America: should global food price fever give us the shivers?

Willem Janssen's picture

Also available in Portuguese, Español

As food prices creep up again for the third time in five years, concerns about global food security are also on the rise. Right off the bat, three questions come to mind:  Why this is happening? How does this affect Latin America and the Caribbean? What should we do about it?


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