The objective of the South Africa Investment Climate Assessment (ICA) is to evaluate the investment climate in South Africa in all its operational dimensions and to promote policies to strengthen the private sector. The investment climate is made up of the many location-specific factors that...

This report examines the legal, administrative, and regulatory barriers that are preventing women in Kenya from contributing fully to the Kenyan economy. Building on the 2004 Foreign Investment and Advisory Service (FIAS) report, "Improving the Commercial Legal Framework and Removing...

Government guarantees can help persuade private investors to finance valuable new infrastructure. But because their costs are hard to estimate and usually do not show up in the government's accounts, governments can be tempted to grant too many guarantees. Drawing on a diverse range of...

In every region of the world, the intensification of crop-based agriculture has been associated with a sharp increase in the use of chemical fertilizer. Given the generally low levels of fertilizer use in Africa, there can be little doubt that fertilizer use must increase in Africa if the region...

This report proposes the development of a coordinated and comprehensive national policy within the Energy Law that is presently under preparation based on four foundational themes: reducing energy growth below economic growth, making better use of national energy resources, safeguarding the...

Presented in this study are nine development initiatives in six less developed countries - Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Timor Leste and Uganda. The cases show that development initiatives, which engage local communities and local level governments, are often able to have...

Este ambicioso libro se origino en un simposio llevado a cabo en Paris en marzo de 2006, promovido por el World Bank's Development Economics Department, y su proposito principal es examinar los distintos papeles que juegan las universidades en el contexto general de los sistemas nacionales de...