SA Newsletter

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This quarterly electronic information brief provides relevant information on recently published reports, seminars and events. To subscribe, please visit.  We also invite you to access other similar information on the websites of our countries:

 

South Africa (www.worldbank.org/southafrica)

Botswana (www.worldbank.org/botswana)
Namibia (www.worldbank.org/namibia)

Lesotho (www.worldbank.org/lesotho)
Swaziland (www.worldbank.org/swaziland)

 

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Farewell to Country Director

 

Ritva Reinikka will be leaving her position as Country Director towards the end of February to take up a position in Washington on March 1. Her new position is as director of Poverty Reduction and Economic Management for the Middle East and North Africa. Ritva will sincerely miss Sub-Saharan Africa, where she has spent so much of her professional career. During her tenure as Country Director the Bank's partnership with the middle income countries of South Africa, Mauritius, Botswana, Namibia and Swaziland has been strengthened, resulting in a broader dialogue and a strategic partnership strategy for each of the countries. The Bank recently opened a liaison office in Mauritius. The new Country Director will be announced in the coming months. We wish Ritva well in her new position and will miss her energy and dedication to development on the continent.

 

 

When it comes to HIV/AIDS it should be us against the disease.  That was the consensus of service providers and government officials from South Africa's capital city of Tshwane (Pretoria) and Washington D.C. who came together via video conference to commemorate World AIDS day. The World Bank hosted and helped facilitate the December 3 dialogue between the two cities that have a twinning agreement. The discussion focused on best practices aimed at reducing the threat of HIV/AIDS in their respective municipalities. Click here for more information.

 

 

Development Marketplace (DM) is a competitive grant program administered by the World Bank and supported by various partners that identifies and funds innovative, early-stage projects with high potential for development impact.

 

The competition this year is focused on the theme of Sustainable Agriculture for Development.  It is asking participants to focus on solutions to agricultural challenges in developing countries such as linking small-scale farmers to markets; improving land access for poor farmers; and promoting the environmental services of agriculture in addressing climate change and biodiversity conservation.

 

DM2008 awards will support 25-30 of the most innovative ideas that advance sustainable agriculture in developing countries. Typically, DM competitions attract close to 3,000 applicants, which are then narrowed down to about 100 finalists. Finalists of DM2008 will be invited to the competition's Marketplace event in Washington, September 24-25, to compete for grants and participate in knowledge exchange activities.  Click here for more information.

 

 

 

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Each Spring, the joint Bank-IMF Development Committee and the IMF's International Monetary and Financial Committee hold meetings to discuss progress on the work of the Bank and Fund. Plenary sessions of the World Bank and IMF's Boards of Governors are only scheduled during the Annual Meetings in the autumn.

 

 

 

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The Boards of Governors of the International Monetary Fund (Fund) and World Bank Group (Bank) normally meet once a year in the autumn for a two-day plenary session to discuss the work of their respective institutions. The Annual Meetings are preceded by the ministerial-level meetings of the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC), the IMF's policy-guiding body, and the Development Committee, a joint IMF-World Bank forum.

 

 

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The World Bank Institute (WBI) is the capacity development arm of the World Bank, and helps countries share and apply global and local knowledge to meet development challenges. WBI's capacity development programs are designed not only to build skills among groups of individuals involved in performing tasks, but also to strengthen the organizations in which they work, and the sociopolitical environment in which they operate.

 

 

 

 

This workshop was part of the broader Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) partnership with South Africa's Department of Science and Technology and took place in Maputo. Representatives from ministries of science and technology took part to discuss in specific detail how they can cooperate regionally on S&T policy, S&T Action Plans and Strategies. Contact Robert Hawkins for more information.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The World Bank Institute and the Meraka Institute are engaged in a collaborative partnership to create a network of South African universities around the theme of community outreach and social entrepreneurship.  A conference will be held in March to discuss how young people can partner with communities to create new initiatives for community development as well as support transparency and identification of bottlenecks for service delivery in these communities. Click here for more information.

 

 

 

 

Social Safety Nets are mechanisms that mitigate the effects of poverty and other risks on vulnerable households to protect them from income risk and to ensure access to essential social services. The course provides detailed information on the principal types of safety net interventions and their mechanics, including cash and in-kind transfers, income-generating schemes, targeting, and monitoring and evaluation of policies and interventions. Participants in this program will learn about the role of social safety nets within the broader context of equitable economic development, public expenditure, and budget constraints. The course is open to senior policymakers and technical staff of government agencies responsible for social and economic and human development policies; researchers and practitioners from academic organizations and training institutions, and NGOs involved with poverty and social safety nets issues in client countries. Click here for more information.

 

 

Oil Price Volatility, Economic Impact and Financial Management Forum, Washington D.C., United States of America, 10-11 March 2008                              

 

This conference is intended to provide a forum for exchange of views among policymakers, corporate strategists, and development practitioners on the impact of high and volatile prices on growth and financial sector risks, and to strengthen participants' understanding of policy options and management techniques to mitigate the risks associated with oil price volatility.  South African participants will be invited. Click here for more information.

 

This seminar will bring together key experts on participatory budgeting at the policy, operational, and capacity building levels. It will be organized by the Municipal Development Partnership for Eastern and Southern Africa (MDP-ESA). The event is supported by the Municipality of Durban, African Affiliated Network on Social Accountability (ANSA), The World Bank Group, The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), The Trust Fund for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development (TFESSD), UN-Habitat, and Wagner School of Public Administration/New York University. Contact Mandisa Kota for more information.

 

 

 

 

This workshop seeks to: stimulate debate around land administration in Africa; facilitate an exchange of experience between African countries; contribute to the development of a common vision of the way forward among practitioners and stakeholders of land administration and reform; and enable SADC land reform facility to develop and manage a capacity building program for land redistribution and land administration. Contact Mandisa Kota for more information.

 

 

 

 

For more information on WBI's learning activities click here.

 

 

 

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These publications and more are available at the Public Information Centre

 

 

 

The world's demand for food is expected to double within the next 50 years, while the natural resources that sustain agriculture will become increasingly scarce, degraded, and vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In many poor countries, agriculture accounts for at least 40 percent of GDP and 80 percent of employment. At the same time, about 70 percent of the world's poor live in rural areas and most depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.

 

World Development Report 2008 seeks to assess where, when, and how agriculture can be an effective instrument for economic development, especially development that favors the poor. It examines several broad questions:

 

Global Economic Prospects 2008: Technology Diffusion in the Developing World

This report, examines the state of technology in developing countries and the pace with which it has advanced since the early 1990s. It reveals both encouraging and cautionary trends. On the one hand, the pace of technological progress in developing countries has been much faster than in high-income countries-reflecting increased exposure to foreign technology as a result of linkages with high-skilled diasporas and the opening of these countries to international trade and foreign direct investment. On the other hand, the technology gap remains large, and the domestic factors that determine how quickly technologies spread within developing countries often stymie progress, especially among low-income countries.

This year's Global Economic Prospects comes on the heels of an extended period of strong growth and a 15 year period of strong performance in much of the developing world, which has contributed to substantial declines in global poverty. While high oil prices and heightened market volatility may signal a coming pause in this process, over the longer term continued technological progress should continue to push back poverty. Click here for full-text.

 

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New Policy Research Working Papers

 

 

The first part of this paper reviews the literature on the relation between finance and growth. The second part of the paper reviews literature on the historical and policy determinants of financial development. Governments play a central role in shaping the operation of financial systems and the degree to which large segments of the financial system have access to financial services. The paper discusses the relationship between financial sector policies and economic development. Click here for full-text.

 

An influential body of theoretical research and an emerging line of empirical work suggest that the operation of the formal financial system affects the degree to which economic opportunities are defined by talent and initiative rather than by parental wealth and social connections. This paper discusses the theory of how financial markets influence economic opportunity and reviews recent empirical work on the relation between formal financial systems and poverty, income inequality, and economic opportunity.  Click here for full-text.

   

The competitiveness of firms in open economies is increasingly determined by access to low-cost and high-quality producer services - telecommunications, transport and distribution services, financial intermediation, etc. This paper discusses the role of services in economic growth, focusing in particular on channels through which openness to trade in services may increase productivity at the level of the economy as a whole, industries and the firm. Click here for full-text. 

Subsidy policies on public urban transport have been adopted ubiquitously. In both developed and developing countries, subsidies are implemented to make transport more affordable. Despite their widespread implementation, there are virtually no quantitative assessments of their distributional incidence, making it impossible to determine if these instruments are pro-poor. This paper reviews the arguments used to justify subsidy policies in public urban transport. Using different tools to quantitatively evaluate the incidence and distributive impacts of subsidy policy options, the paper analyzes the findings of a series of research papers that study urban public transport subsidy policies in developed and developing countries. Click here for full-text.

 

The World Bank Research E-Newsletteris published once a month and reaches subscribers via email. The newsletter contains monthly updates on World Bank events and publications related to Development Economics research. Numerous links lead readers to more detailed information, and allow downloads of publications, including recent policy research working papers.Subscribe to the World Bank's newsletter at: www.econ.worldbank.org/research_digest

For more information on the Bank's new and archived research programs click here.

 

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This is an internet-based broadcasting service that streams World Bank seminars, workshops and conferences to the public on the Internet.

 

Some of the latest and most-watched B-Spans:

1. Joseph Stiglitz and Kenneth Rogoff discuss: Globalisation and Its Discontents

2. The World is Flat by Tomas Friedman

3. Science, Technology, Innovation, and Wealth Creation

4. World Bank and Donors Must Change to Reach MDGs Says Jeff Sachs

5. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

6. Tough Choices, by Carly Fiorina

7. International Migration: Problem or Opportunity?

8. Presidential Lecture

9. On Measuring Governance: A Roundtable Discussion

10. Session 1: Challenges for New Leadership Teams in Fragile States

 

  

Recent releases include:

1. PREM Seminar Series
2. Private Sector Engagement in HIV/AIDS
3. Building Knowledge Economies: Advanced Strategies for Development

To view all available B-SPANs visit the B-SPAN homepage.

 

 

 

The World Bank Institute's Multimedia Center and B-SPAN introduce the Bank's first pod cast, the "Best of B-SPAN". A series of downloadable radio programs distributed automatically on the 1^st and 15^th of every month, the series will cover a different development topic in each show using excerpts from the extensive B-SPAN video archive. Listeners can hear programs individually, or subscribe to the pod-cast free to have new content delivered to them automatically with each update.  For more information and to view the latest pod-casts click here.

 

Video on Demand (VoD) is a video portal developed & provided by the GDLN Multimedia Center that disseminates and archives videos collected from various sources, such as B-SPAN and WBI video collection. VoD allows users to add, browse, query, and play back videos over the Internet. To see available videos visit the VOD homepage).

 

 

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For additional Information, please contact our Public Information Center (PIC):

Location:  1250 Pretorius Street, ProEquity Court 1st Floor, Hatfield.

Opening Hours: Monday - Friday (09:00 - 16:00)

Telephone: 012 431 3103/0

Fax: 012 431 3134

Email: salibrary@worldbank.org

Contact: Mmenyane Seoposengwe

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