The devaluation of the CFA Franc in 1994 generated a public investment boom in Senegal. The increase in public investment was made possible thanks to an improved budgetary situation related to the reduction in real terms of the public wage bill which had been too large for some time. The rise in...

This chapter was originally drafted in 2007 to inform the diagnostic of Liberia’s first Poverty Reduction Strategy. It is based on an analysis of the Core Welfare Questionnaire Indicator survey implemented in 2007 by Liberia’s Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Services. The chapter...

This chapter was written in 2007 in order to inform the diagnostic of Liberia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. Little has been written on the education system in Liberia since the start of the conflict in large part because of lack of good data. The chapter provides a diagnostic of Liberia’s...

As for education, little has been written on the health system in Liberia since the start of the conflict in large part because of lack of good data. This chapter was also written in 2007 to inform the diagnostic of Liberia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. It provides a diagnostic of Liberia’s...

To help prepare Liberia’s poverty reduction strategy, a CWIQ (Core Welfare Indicator Questionnaire) household survey was conducted by the Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-Informational Services. This article is based on an analysis of this survey to estimate the level of poverty and...

This article analyses the evolution of poverty and living conditions in Senegal using household surveys conducted over 2005-2009 within the context of the country’s efforts to achieve by 2015 the targets set forth under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The article was prepared as part...

Apart from fiscal measures, another initiative taken by the government of Liberia to respond to the economic crisis consisted in the launch of a cash for work temporary employment program. This part of the study consists of three chapters devoted to the analysis of the program. First, in this...

To help households cope with the recent economic crisis, and especially the increase in food prices, the government of Liberia announced a number of fiscal measures. A first measure was to implement a temporary exoneration of import duties on food products, and especially imported rice. A second...

This paper analyzes the trend in, and determinants of poverty in Mali from 2001 and 2006. Thanks to strong economic growth, poverty has been reduced. Yet due to demographic growth, the number of the poor is still increasing. Households working in agriculture, especially in the cotton producing...

World cotton prices have been declining in the past decade and farmers in West and Central Africa have been especially hard hit. This has led to heated policy debates and difficult trade-offs for governments, as their desire to help producers is constrained by the need to avoid large subsidies...