The world's demand for food is expected to double within the next 50 years, while the natural resources that sustain agriculture will become increasingly scarce, degraded, and vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In many poor countries, agriculture accounts for at least 40 percent of GDP and 80 percent of employment. At the same time, about 70 percent of the world's poor live in rural areas and most depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. World Development Report 2008 seeks to assess where, when, and how agriculture can be an effective instrument for economic development, especially development that favors the poor. It examines several broad questions: How has agriculture changed in developing countries in the past 20 years? What are the important new challenges and opportunities for agriculture? Which new sources of agricultural growth can be captured cost effectively in particular in poor countries with large agricultural sectors as in Africa? How can agricultural growth be made more effective for poverty reduction? How can governments facilitate the transition of large populations out of agriculture, without simply transferring the burden of rural poverty to urban areas? How can the natural resource endowment for agriculture be protected? How can agriculture's negative environmental effects be contained? This year's report marks the 30th year the World Bank has been publishing the World Development Report.

The African Development Bank commissioned four case studies on Debt Relief Initiatives, Development Assistance and Service Delivery in Ghana, Malawi, Senegal, and Uganda from the last quarter of 2006 to mid 2007. The objective of the study was to appraise the extent to which debt relief resources are being used to improve social service delivery. There is strong agreement from all four case studies that debt relief created flexibility in governments spending by playing the role of flexible and predictable budget support. In this context, governments acquired more degrees of freedom to allocate debt relief resources in line with their own objectives. In all four countries debt relief resources were more easily transformed into MDG-related spending than tied aid. The case studies had a consensus in identifying the accountability of public institutions to civil society, through community monitoring or execution of expenditures, as the most effective means of enhancing spending effectiveness. This formed the basis for the success observed in program implementation. From the findings of the case studies it is clear that debt relief can lead to enhanced service delivery provided certain conditions prevail. These conditions can be influenced by donors as well as the willingness of beneficiary governments to undertake reforms. The general observation across the case studies is that debt relief has a major positive impact on service delivery, and progress towards the MDGs, when beneficiaries: (i) have high capacity in MDG spending, (ii) are highly accountable, and (iii) receive stable and high-quality aid.

This handbook presents an extensive new overview of African development - past, present and future. It addresses key core themes and topics that are pertinent to the continent's development - including sections on history, health and food, politics, economics, rural and urban development, and development policy and practice. The volume draws on the expertise of over 60 of the world's leading scholars to provide a detailed and up-to-date analysis of the key opportunities and challenges that confront Africa, and how such issues are being addressed. Arranged by key themes, the handbook provides not only a historical understanding of the past, but also political perspectives on the future. The chapters provide critically informed analyses of their topics by drawing upon the latest conceptual viewpoints and applied experiences in Africa in the form of case studies to offer a comprehensive examination of the opportunities, challenges, key debates and future prospects. This handbook is an invaluable state-of-the-art overview and reference concerning many different aspects of Africa's development, which will be of interest to academics in all fields of African studies, and also academics and students working in cognate disciplines such as development studies, geography, history, politics and economics.

September 1996 Bilateral and multilateral creditors have made a significant effort to increase financial resources flowing to low-income African countries, helping them expand their import capacity. But the increasing share of pure grants and debt relief from bilateral donors in recent years has not allowed these countries to reduce their total indebtedness and solve their debt-overhang problem. Debt relief from bilateral donors has been neutral regarding recipient countries' import capacity. Hernández and Katada analyze the effects of bilateral debt forgiveness (part of official development assistance) on 32 low-income countries in Africa (1984-93). Asking whether it makes a difference for recipient countries to receive pure grants rather than official development assistance (ODA) debt relief, they focus on how one form of aid or the other affects the countries' import capacity. They conclude that: Grants allowed recipient countries to significantly expand their import capacity for 1984-93 as grants and import capacity have been increasing since 1984. But the increasing share of concessional lending and debt relief in recent years has not allowed these countries to reduce their total indebtedness and solve their debt overhang problem. Their arrears increased significantly. The biggest recipients of debt relief also received the lion's share of the increase in pure grants. Debt forgiveness and pure grants were allocated in a way not entirely consistent with standard economic hierarchies (such as poverty levels, indebtedness, and access to alternative sources of finance). Bilateral ODA debt forgiveness appears to be neutral in the sense of not having any significant impact on recipient countries' capacity to import. Bilateral ODA debt forgiveness has neither increased or curtailed the import capacity of the major recipient countries. During 1989-93, multilateral lending replaced the decrease in bilateral lending that, in turn, was caused by an increase in grants. (Bilateral ODA debt relief implies smaller cash flows because it is pseudo or accounting money and because with it goes reduced new lending from bilateral sources.) Private creditors have typically withdrawn money from the countries in the sample as grants increased. And debt relief has had a crowding-out effect on new lending. Bilateral donors are switching their development finance to Africa from concessional and nonconcessional lending to a combination of pure grants and ODA debt relief. This paper - a product of the International Finance Division, International Economics Department - is part of a larger effort in the department to monitor developments in highly indebted low income countries.

Finally, when the country enters the second generation of reforms, such as public sector institutional reform, short-term, conditionality-based aid can once again be harmful - by reducing ownership, participation, and sustainability of the reform process."--BOOK JACKET.

International debt relief continues to be a highly controversial subject. Although many heavily indebted poor countries have received large amounts of debt relief over the past quarter of a century, it doesn’t appear to be enough. This book examines the impact of international debt relief efforts since 1990. It assesses whether the various debt relief modalities have enhanced economic growth in eight highly indebted countries in Latin America and Africa. Dijkstra argues that fundamental changes of the international aid and debt architecture are necessary to stop the flow of new multilateral loans and the possible perverse effects of conditionality.