The unanticipated spike in international food prices in 2007-08 hit many developing countries hard. International prices for food and other agricultural products increased by more than 100 percent between early 2007 and mid-2008. Prices for food cereals more than doubled; and those for rice...

The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) assessed the effectiveness of Bank support for decentralization between fiscal 1990 and 2007 in 20 countries, seeking to inform the design and implementation of future support. Given the difficulties of measuring the results of decentralization, the...

Sub-Saharan Africa is a critical development priority-it has some of the world's poorest countries and during the past two decades the number of poor in the Region has doubled, to 300 million-more than 40 percent of the Region's population. Africa remains behind on most of the Millennium...