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The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) assesses the main exogenous and endogenous risks affecting the implementation of the strategy, including terms-of-trade shocks and absorptive capacity weaknesses. The medium-term expenditure framework identifies the priorities and needs of the country to meet the Millennium Development Goals. The PRSP provides extensive sensitivity analysis of the impact of the main exogenous risks. The effective channeling of the resources freed from debt relief in favor of growth-enhancing and social development programs constitute a critical challenge for the government.

Cameroon’s good record of performance in the macroeconomic and structural areas under the previous three-year Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) arrangement remained broadly satisfactory during the first six months of the first annual program. Progress in structural reforms has continued, notably in the financial, transport, forestry, and petroleum sectors. For the medium term, Executive Directors emphasized the importance of continuing to strengthen the efficiency and transparency of public revenue and expenditure management, and welcomed the authorities’ intention to launch a technical audit of the judicial system.

African countries need to improve the performance of their public sectors if they are going to achieve their goals of growth, poverty reduction, and the provision of better services for their citizens. Between 1995 and 2004, the Bank provided some $9 billion in lending and close to $900 million in grants and administrative budget to support public sector capacity building in Africa. This evaluation assesses Bank support for public sector capacity building in Africa over these past 10 years. It is based on six country studies, assessments of country strategies and operations across the Region, and review of the work of the World Bank Institute, the Institutional Development Fund, and the Bank-supported African Capacity Building Foundation.

Every scholar who reads this book will concur that at the heart of John’s analysis is rooted a fundamental question and preoccupation that although Cameroon is naturally endowed with abundant and diverse energy resources, the country however remains an energy-poor state due to the absence of a durable Energy Security Plan, political vision and political will, all of which continue to hamper the development of a range of renewables alongside various fossil fuels to improve and guarantee durable Energy Security to catalyze development and reverse the current energy crisis. Prof. Dr. Amelia Hadfield Head of Department of Politics, University of Surrey, United Kingdom

The article presents the first major update of the international $1 a day poverty line, proposed in World Development Report 1990: Poverty for measuring absolute poverty by the standards of the world's poorest countries. In a new and more representative data set of national poverty lines, a marked economic gradient emerges only when consumption per person is above about $2.00 a day at 2005 purchasing power parity. Below this, the average poverty line is $1.25, which is proposed as the new international poverty line. The article tests the robustness of this line to alternative estimation methods and explains how it differs from the old $1 a day line.

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