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This quarterly electronic information brief provides relevant information on recently published reports, seminars and events. To subscribe, please visit www.worldbank.org/afr/za. We also invite you to please access other similar information on the websites of our countries:
News Flash
Parliamentary Network on the World Bank (15-18 March), Cape Town, South Africa
The 7th Annual Conference of the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank brought together 200 parliamentarians from around the world with representatives from the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, other multilateral organizations, academia, civil society and the private sector. For more information click here.
World Bank Board Discusses Revised Strategy and Next Steps on Strengthening the World Bank Group’s Governance and Anti-corruption WorkOn March 20 the Board of Directors unanimously endorsed the sector paper entitled "Strengthening World Bank Group Engagement on Governance and Anticorruption." All of the consultation reports are posted on the Bank’s website at: www.worldbank.org/governancefeedback.
Global Forum V on Fighting Crime and Safeguarding Integrity (2-5 April), Johannesburg, South Africa
Government ministers, senior government officials and experts from around the world met in April in Johannesburg, South Africa, to expand co-operation in exposing corruption, prosecuting corrupt officials and recovering stolen assets. The April 2-5 ministerial Global Forum V on Fighting Corruption and Safeguarding Integrity (GF V) brought participants together to discuss practical and effective measures for preventing and fighting corruption and share best practices. For further information visit the IMF’s website.
Upcoming Events
Spring Meetings (14-15 April), Washington D.C.
Each spring, the IMF?s International Monetary and Financial Committee and the joint World Bank-IMF Development Committee holds meetings to discuss progress on the work of the Fund and Bank. Visit the 2007 Spring Meetings website, for more information.
ABCDE 2007 (17-18 May), Bled, Slovenia
The Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) 2007 is co-organized by the World Bank and the Government of Slovenia.
The conference will have as the overarching topic ?Private Sector and Development? and will feature research papers on the following sub-topics, as well as working sessions:
1. Financial inclusion
2. The business climate
3. The provision of public services by non-state actors: health, education, environment/water.
To view the draft agenda, find information on support grants, or register online for the conference, visit the ABCDE 2007 website.
Past Events
Global Forum on Building Science, Technology, and Innovation Capacity for Sustainable Growth and Poverty Reduction (13-15 February), Washington D.C.
In February, the World Bank, in partnership with CIDA, DFID, Global Research Alliance (GRA), Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Science Initiative Group (SIG), UNCTAD, and UNESCO convened a Global Forum on Building Science, Technology, and Innovation Capacity for Sustainable Growth and Poverty Reduction. The Forum sought to understand the lessons of previous and ongoing science, technology, and innovation (STI) capacity building experiences and map out new and more effective ways for governments, industry, academia, foundations, and donors to work together to apply STI capacity building to development in low and middle-income countries. For more on Forum proceedings click here. Improving Governance and Fighting Corruption Conference (14-15 March), Brussels, Belgium.
The World Bank’s Governance and Anti-Corruption (GAC) strategy, which streamlines governance work into Bank operations, received a solid boost when nearly 500 people from government, the private sector and various branches of civil society gathered in Brussels for a two-day conference. The conference featured a keynote address by World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, along with other addresses by Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. For more information, podcasts and other media highlights visit the conference website at: http://www.improvinggovernance.be/
World Bank Institute
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. Upcoming Courses
A 3-day workshop aimed at strengthening the operations of African research institutes and networks. For more information visit the workshop web page
Capacity Day 2007: Leadership Effectiveness and Accountability (19 April), Washington D.C.
Capacity Day 2007 will explore how the Bank and others can improve the support for leadership development through keynote addresses, discussion panels, and interactive audience engagement. H.E. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, President of the Republic of Liberia, will deliver the keynote address.
Controlling Fraud and Error in Safety Net Programs (16-17 May), Washington D.C.
Having sufficient control and oversight mechanisms is critical to manage and minimize political risks and to ensure effective implementation of Social Safety Net programs. They are important for ensuring the efficient use of public resources (targeting and eligibility), contributing to program credibility and sustainability, and guarding against errors or potential political manipulation. WBI World Bank Social Safety Nets have put together a course designed for Bank staff working on safety nets and poverty-related programs in selected countries. For further information visit the program website.
World Conference on Intellectual Capital for Communities 2007 (24-25 May), Washington D.C.
The World Conference on Intellectual Capital for Communities 2007 is an opportunity to further explore the challenges and opportunities stemming from today?s increasingly knowledge-based economy. It will look, in particular, at how to measure intellectual capital and how countries can benefit from their intellectual capital abroad . Click here for more information.
Collective Africa Budget Reform Initiative (CABRI) Study Tour and Workshop (June), Pretoria, South Africa
Across Africa citizens are demanding that governments use public funds responsibly and at the same time increase service delivery. More attention than ever before is focused on improved public finance management and its contribution towards achieving welfare goals. CABRI is a professional network of senior budget officials in Africa. It is African-led and managed and seeks to support officials in planning and managing their country’s budgets and budget improvement programs by expanding and making explicit existing knowledge of which reforms work, when and why, and supporting capacity improvements. The network, which is open to all countries in Africa, is holding a week-long study tour and workshop (co-funded by the World Bank) in June on various Public Financial Management issues. For more information contact the CABRI Secretariat.
WBI Past Events
Capacity for African Research Institutes and Networks Workshop (29 November -01 December, 2006), Johannesburg, South Africa
This workshop was aimed at strengthening the operations of Southern-African research institutes and networks. Knowledge management concepts, tools and approaches were shared with research in states and networks. Participants were assisted in developing Action Plans to enhance their organizational capacity. For more information click here.
Affiliated Network of Southern Accountability, Pretoria, South Africa
ANSA-Africa ( www.ansa-africa.net), launched in May 2006, is a new network jointly created by the World Bank and South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) to become a leading African advocate of citizen involvement in demand-side governance initiatives. ANSA-Africa?s first annual stakeholder workshop, held in Pretoria during mid-December 2006, was attended by 60 delegates from some 15 African countries. They debated, in an often lively fashion, perspectives on social accountability issues. Read more about the workshop.
WBI Learning Catalogue
Recent Publications
Making Finance Work for Africa
This publication takes a panoramic view of Africa?s financial systems, both on a large scale ("finance for growth") and a small scale ("finance for all"). It presents a coherent policy approach that addresses African priorities and can work in African conditions.
Atlas of Global Development
The Atlas of Global Development vividly illustrates the key development challenges facing our world today. It builds on and replaces the existing World Bank Atlas, which has been published by the World Bank for almost four decades.
World Development Report 2007: Development and the next Generation
The theme of the World Development Report 2007 is youth - young people between the ages of 12 to 24. As this population group seeks identity and independence, they make decisions that affect not only their own well-being, but that of others, and they do this in a rapidly changing demographic and socio-economic environment. Supporting young people?s transition to adulthood poses important opportunities and risky challenges for development policy. Click here for the WDR 2007 website.
Global Economic Prospects 2007: Managing the next age of Globalization
Over the next 25 years developing countries will move to center stage in the global economy. Global Economic Prospects 2007 analyzes the opportunities – and stresses – this will create. While rich and poor countries alike stand to benefit, the integration process will make more acute stresses that are already apparent today – in income inequality, in labor markets, and in the environment.
New Policy Research Working Papers
Specification of investment functions in Sub-Saharan Africa
This paper highlights heterogeneity in the process of capital accumulation across different countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, and derives a formal specification of investment functions in the primary, industry, and service sectors in the region using a variation of the combined Tobin?s Q Theory and the neoclassical models of investment. Click here for full text.
Firm innovation in emerging markets: the roles of governance and finance
The authors investigate the determinants of firm innovation in over 19,000 firms across 47 developing economies. They define the innovation process broadly, to include not only core innovation such as the introduction of new products and new technologies, but also other types of activities that promote knowledge transfers and adapt production processes. Click here for full text.
The role of education quality for economic growth
This paper reviews the role of education in promoting economic well-being, focusing on the role of educational quality. It concludes that there is strong evidence that the cognitive skills of the population – rather than mere school attainment – are powerfully related to individual earnings, to the distribution of income, and to economic growth. Click here for full text.
Services inputs and firm productivity in Sub-Saharan Africa: evidence from firm-level data
The authors investigate the relationship between the productivity of African manufacturing firms and their access to services inputs. They use data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey for over 1,000 firms in 10 Sub-Saharan African countries to calculate the total factor productivity of firms. The Enterprise Surveys also contain unique measures of firms? access to communications, electricity, and financial services. Click here for full text.
World Bank Research Newsletter
B-SPAN
This is an internet-based broadcasting service that streams World Bank seminars, workshops and conferences to the public on the Internet.
Among the new events posted on B-SPAN during the past month are:
10 Most-Watched Presentations during March (available on the B-SPAN homepage) :
New Events posted on B-Span
Leveraging E-Government for Successful Anticorruption (17 January)
E-government can be a powerful tool for better service delivery and coordination, but has it been as deeply evaluated for the prevention of corruption? In this videoconference, linking the World Bank’s headquarters in Washington, DC, with India, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Paraguay, panelists discussed ways that information and communication technologies can fight corruption and enhance good governance, including case studies from around the world. To download click here.
On Measuring Governance: A Roundtable Discussion (11 January)
Governance has become a central topic in development, and many sets of indicators have been developed to measure the quality of governance and to rank countries accordingly. But how are these measurements made and the indicators applied? What issues arise in constructing and using governance indicators? In this round table, World Bank and external experts discussed data and methodologies used to develop governance indicators, the respective advantages and disadvantages of various indicators, and much more.
For the streaming video and the summary click here.
B-SPAN Pod-casting Series
The World Bank Institute’s Multimedia Center and B-SPAN introduce the Bank’s first podcast, the “Best of B-SPANâ€. 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 feed to have new content delivered to them automatically with each update. For more information and to view the latest pod-casts click here.
New Disclosed Project Documents
Project Information Documents
Botswana- Botswana Integrated Transport Project
Integrated Safeguards Data Sheets
Namibia-Promoting Environmental Stability through Improved Land Use Planning
Lesotho-Private Sector Competitiveness and Economic Diversification
For these and additional project documents please access the projects website.
Public Information Center (PIC)
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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