"Concerns have been raised about the impact of rising food prices worldwide on the poor. To assess the impact of rising food prices in any particular country it is necessary to look at both the impact on food producers who are poor or near-poor and could benefit from an increase in prices and...

Regional organizations and national governments are increasingly focusing on enhancing the benefits from mining sector investment. The Africa Union's African Mining Vision 2050 outlines a new resource-based industrialization and development strategy for Africa, based on downstream, upstream, and...

The West African Mineral Sector Strategic Assessment (WAMSSA) is a strategic environmental and social assessment intended to identify policy, institutional, and regulatory adjustments required to integrate environmental and social considerations into mineral sector development in Africa. The...

Erosion and flooding are the most visible consequences of coastal zone degradation in West Africa. Man-made and natural processes, aggravated by the effects of climate change, cause erosion and flooding. These threatened densely populated coasts, the nerve center of the region's demographic and...

Agriculture is an increasingly risky business in much of the world, including the West African region. The World Bank has developed an Agricultural Risk Management (ARM) framework that assesses risks in systemic production, markets, and enabling environments to understand their total sectoral...

Ports have always played an essential role in this highly trade-dependent region. While there are still wide disparities in terms of throughput volumes and capacity, traffic has been growing rapidly in most countries over the last decade. Overall, total throughput in West Africa grew from around...

The primary objective of this article is to present nugormesese as an indigenous mechanism of social capital in Buem-Kator, a farming community on the Ghana side of the Ghana-Togo border area. The concept of social capital will be minimally defined to refer to the capability of social norms and...

The natural reserve of Ker Cupaam, is located along the Atlantic coast in Senegal, a fragment of a former national forest, basically for the protection of endangered species. Both the flora, and fauna had been severely damaged as a result of drought, grazing, and firewood harvest. Though...

This synthesis paper describes the HIV epidemics in 15 West African countries - Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Togo, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. It focuses particularly on the degree to which the epidemics...

This report assesses the potential gains from regionalized telecommunications policy in West Africa. The report seeks to assist officials in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the West African Telecommunications Regulators Assembly (WATRA) and member states in designing an...