Despite external shocks, Mali's economy grew by 5.3 percent per year between 2003 and 2006, driven primarily by the telecommunications sector. But Mali's landlocked condition, together with the uneven distribution of population and economic activities between the arid north and the much richer...

Infrastructure made a net contribution of just over two percentage points to Botswana's improved per capita growth performance in recent years. Raising the country s infrastructure endowment to that of the region's middle-income countries could boost annual growth by about 1.2 percentage points....