Zié Ibrahima Coulibaly, an Engineer, has been a Senior Infrastructure Specialist at the World Bank since 2003. Since that time, he has been in charge of several urban development assistance projects in Africa, in particular in Cameroon, Central African Republic, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. Assistance has largely focused on the preparation and implementation of operations based on urban, organizational, and financial audits; programs related to investment, maintenance, and municipal institution building; and monitoring and evaluation. Recent assistance operations are placing emphasis more on local participation and performance requirements as conditions for communes to obtain investment resources.