The Urban Sector Rehabilitation Project (URSP) consisted of a large program of infrastructure rehabilitation works and institutional reform activities covering 8 project towns - Arusha, Iringa, Morogoro, Mbeya, Moshi, Mwanza, Tabora and Tanga. Additional investments in Dodoma and Dar-essalaam...

This note shows the results of the "Clean Air Initiative in Sub-Saharan African Cities," a study to evaluate air pollution launched and coordinated by the World Bank. The following items are addressed: (i) estimation of the present global level of air pollution in Cotonou; (ii) determination of...

The Gabon Urban Development Project is being conducted through a series of pilot projects in the poorest, most densely populated neighborhoods in three cities. Reducing poverty hinges on increasing the access of the poor to employment opportunities. This requires improving infrastructure, which...

The widely-acclaimed Economic Recovery Program launched by Ghana in 1983 faced the challenge of sustaining the gains achieved in terms of economic liberalization and macroeconomic stability. The country needed to enter a phase of accelerated export-led growth and social equity that would deliver...

Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a culturally diverse, environmentally rich country with over five million inhabitants, the majority of whom live on the eastern half of the rugged and mountainous island of New Guinea, the rest scattered among tropical archipelagos in the Bismark and Solomon seas. PNG's...

Vietnam's economic emergence is perhaps best experienced along its rural roads: over 175,000 km of pavement, rubble and dirt track extend to two-thirds of the country's population and nearly all of the poorest people, who live among its productive farms, lush forests and meandering river...

The Peace Accords of 1996 brought an end to 36 years of armed conflict in Guatemala, and signaled the beginning of a complex and challenging process of reconstruction and social reconciliation. A central plank of the consensus expressed in the Peace Accords was the overhauling of Guatemala's...