The provision of debt relief to Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPCs) commencing in the late 1990s, and the growing interest among donors in providing direct budget support, increased donor focus on national budget systems. Given that debt relief and aid resources are fungible, donors were...

The 2004 Country Integrated Fiduciary Assessment (CIFA) in Uganda was the first exercise by key development partners, and the government to adopt an integrated, and holistic approach to the assessment of Public Financial Management (PFM), along the lines of the Public Expenditure and Financial...

One of the World Bank's key advisory roles is to assist its partner countries to make strategic decisions about the use of their public funds. Governments and the Bank together assess the public sector's potential role as a provider, financier, or regulator of services, or simply as a catalyst...

The key objective of the Guinea Public Expenditure Review (PER) was the improvement of Guinea's public resource management through more efficient allocations and enhanced budget process. Innovative features of the first Bank-assisted PER report for Guinea included costing out of priority...

The Public Expenditure Review (PER) carried out in Togo in November 1995-November 1996 had two principal objectives: to assist the government in identifying priorities to increase the efficiency and equity of public spending; and to internalize the expenditure review exercise. The PER process...

The Economic Policy and Public Finance Management Credit (EPPFMC) was part of the Country Assistance Strategies (CAS) base case lending scenario of budget support operations. The thematic coverage of the EPPFMC focused on policy and institutional issues in macro, public finance, and selected...

The African Virtual University (AVU) has helped reduce the digital divide in Africa and proven that modern communications technology can succeed in Africa. It has raised the profile of the continent positively and helped establish Africa as a business address. Today, a number of Internet and...

In the study "Can Africa claim the 21st century?" the author argues on the enormous unexploited potential the region has in its people, "a hidden growth reserve" as he refers to them, and, most importantly in its women, who now provide more than half the region's labor, but who lack equal access...

Sub-Saharan Africa's long-term growth performance will need to improve significantly for the region to visibly reduce poverty and raise the standard of living to an acceptable level. Appropriate actions will also be needed to ensure that an adequate share of the growing income is devoted to...

This article summarizes the publication "Revisiting Gowth and Convergence: Is Africa Catching Up?" The neoclassical Solow framework has been the workhorse for empirical analysis of growth in industrial and developing countries. In this framework, steady state economic growth depends on exogenous...