Group items tagged

"Ratings for the Agriculture Support Services Project for Tunisia were as follows: outcomes were moderately unsatisfactory, risk to development outcome was significant, Bank performance was moderately unsatisfactory, and Borrower performance was moderately unsatisfactory. Some lessons learned included: the benefits of a comprehensive project design can be outweighed by complexity, difficulty in implementation, and resources being spread too thin, even in a middle-income country like Tunisia. The effectiveness of complex projects implemented by multiple actors can be undermined unless the project management unit (or its parent agency) has sufficient authority to proactively coordinate key implementation agencies. Attempts to move from public to private provision of services can be undermined if there is not sufficient attention to beneficiary, needs, perceptions, and incentives, both for producers and service providers. Lack of ownership of producer associations by farmers limits their utility in providing farmers with inputs, access to services and inserting their interests into agricultural policy."

"This report highlights the great potential of the agribusiness sector in Africa by drawing on experience in Africa as well as other regions. This evidence demonstrates that good policies, a conducive business environment, and strategic support from governments"

"Contrary to conventional economic theories, the relationship between income growth and agricultural employment is extremely diverse, even among regions starting from similar levels of development, such as Asia and Africa. Due to its labor-intensive green revolution and strong farm-nonfarm linkages, Asia's development path is mostly characterized by fast growth with relatively slow agricultural exits. In contrast to Asia, urban biased policies, low rural population density, and high rates of population growth have led a number of African countries down a path of slow economic growth with surprisingly rapid agricultural exits. Despite this divergence both continents now face daunting employment problems. Asia appears to be increasingly vulnerable to rising inequality, slower job creation, and shrinking farm sizes, suggesting that Asian governments need to refocus on integrating smallholders and lagging regions into increasingly commercialized rural and urban economies. Africa, in contrast, has yet to achieve its own green revolution, which would still be a highly effective tool for job creation and poverty reduction. However, the diversity of its endowments and its tighter budget constraints mean that agricultural development strategies in Africa need to be highly context specific, financially sustainable, and more evidence- based"

"The African Development Bank (AfDB) was showcased as the knowledge broker and the emerging learning hub for Africa at a recent international e-learning conference in Berlin. The 2012 Online Educa Conference in Berlin was not just a conference, it was an event. Offering a unique environment for international networking, it is the place to discover and absorb some of the world's most innovative thinking about education and technology. The event attracts and brings together experts in the vanguard of technology-enhanced learning from around the world. "

The REDD+ Monitoring, and Measurement, Reporting and Verification workshop "Training the Trainers" will be held in Abidjan, Ivory Coast from 6-10 February 2017, and will cover Francophone Africa. The workshop is jointly organized by GFOI partners who include World Bank FCPF, FAO/UN-REDD, Wageningen University, and GOFC-GOLD. It is the last in the series of four regional workshops, and will be held in French. The aim of the workshop is to demonstrate the use available training materials and tools covering topics including designing and implementing a national forest inventory, calculating emissions from forest degradation, the use of remote sensing change-detection tools to for deforestation monitoring, and generating IPCC compliant data. As part of the GOFC-GOLD partnership, START supported the training by facilitating the participation of two GOFC-GOLD Networks from Africa-the West Africa Regional Network (WARN) and the Miombo Land Use Land Change Network-in a similar training in September 2016. http://start.org/programs/gofc-gold For additional information on the program, please contact Senay Habtezion at shabtezion@start.org.

The key messages in this brief are as follows: 1) Engineering can help Africa unlock its huge potential for economic growth and development and make faster progress toward the Millennium Development Goals. 2) However, there is a serious lack of engineering capacity in Africa and heavy reliance on imported expertise in engineering. 3) Higher education institutions need to change their approach to teaching engineering so that graduates are creative problem-solvers. Engineering courses also need to be oriented towards market and development needs. 4) Women are under-represented in engineering education, constituting less than 10 percent of the student population in Ghana, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe in 2010. 5) Few African countries have established a robust accreditation system. In addition to improving national accreditation, regional accreditation of engineering professionals should be encouraged so that engineers have greater mobility within Africa. 6) A proposed World Bank initiative, the Partnership for Skills in Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology (PASET) will build capacity for technical, vocational and higher education in African countries.

"Project description Expertise France is preparing a bid for a project funded by the World bank which aims to provide technical assistance to the Government of Macedonia and the Ministry of Education and Science (MOES) to reform the 4 year Secondary Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) system and incorporate mechanisms for a quick response to the labour market demands adapting to changes in the market and in the demographic situation. More info online: http://mon.gov.mk/images/documents/SDIS_project/TOR_VET_reform_NOL.15.pdf"

"Accroître les revenus des jeunes en Afrique subsaharienne, segment de la population en pleine croissance, devrait être l'une des grandes priorités de la région, selon un nouveau rapport de la Banque mondiale intitulé « L'emploi des jeunes en Afrique subsaharienne ». Une priorité qui nécessitera un plan d'action sur plusieurs fronts. "

"After the tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia, the recovery of fishing was limited while non-fishing sectors temporarily expanded. This paper shows that fishermen's ex-post labor supply responses continued to be constrained by the provision of low quality production assets. The average fishing productivity also declined for the negative selection in response to the aggregate shock. In a natural experiment set-up, it shows widening income inequality after the tsunami for income losses to the recipients of poor quality aid. It suggests the importance of quality monitoring and private market access to sustainably promote rural development after the tsunami."

"Morocco has a population of about thirty million inhabitants, 45 percentage of who live in rural areas. This rate has been declining steadily for the past fifty years, though the rural exodus rate seems to have slowed down over the past decade. With a population growth rate that has also slowed down (1.4 percentage per year), the country is going through a demographic transition, or 'demographic windfall', with a significant increase in the working population estimated at 11.2 million people in 2005. On the whole, agriculture employs 43 percentage of the economically active population, but this rate goes up to 80 percentages in rural areas. Keeping in mind the 'entries' and 'exits' from the work force, the additional number of the individuals able to work was estimated in 2005 at 460,000 people, and the additional number of jobseekers is estimated at 380,000 per year for the next ten years. "