This report was prepared by the World Bank in partnership with the Livelihoods and Food Security Multi-Donor Trust Fund (LIFT). Both the World Bank and the LIFT are actively involved in supporting Myanmar’s agriculture sector given its significance in poverty reduction and food security, and they both consider the lack of reliable farm data to be a significant constraint to designing effective programs and policies. This report fills some of the data gaps. In addition to presenting the collected data, the report offers the first analysis of these data.

This Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) identifies the binding constraints to reducing extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity in Ethiopia. Achieving those goals requires a two pronged strategy of building on the strengths of past performance as well as introducing new elements. Progress in rural livelihoods drove poverty reduction in the past and will likely do so in the future. In addition, faster, and more inclusive, private sector-led structural change and ‘getting urbanization right’ are essential going forward.

Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank, and Ambassador Andrew Young engaged in a roundtable discussion on economic development, moderated by Dean Bahl of Georgia State. Wolfowitz has made Africa the first priority of the Bank. There is really a chance for Africa to turn the corner. It’s going to have to start with the best performers, doing what the so-called Tigers did in East Asia, showing the way for other countries. Young said you can make more money honestly in a growing economy, than you can steal in a dying economy. Wolfowitz gave examples of the turnaround in Africa.

Transport plays a crucial role in connecting people to goods and services and fostering sustainable development. The literature links improved transport infrastructure to economic growth and poverty reduction through five key mechanisms: (1) reducing transport and production costs, (2) creating jobs, (3) expanding productive capacity, (4) improving access to markets and basic services like health and education, and (5) reducing prices of final goods and services.

The agricultural and food production sector plays a key role in fighting poverty and food insecurity in Moldova, but is facing critical challenges to modernize and integrate into the international market. This paper focuses on smallholder farms, which make up 95 percent of all farms, and explores their potential for growth and the poverty links. Findings reveal that structural change is slow and smallholder farm growth in Moldova is an exception, not the rule.

This South African Agricultural Public Expenditure Review (AgPer) is one of a series of similar studies undertaken in several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa under the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) of the African Union’s (AU) New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) which encourages governments and development partners (DPs) to target public expenditure on the agriculture sector as the most effective way of stimulating growth.

Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank, argued that the Doha Round presents an opportunity to rewrite the rules of an unfair trading system that holds back the potential of the poorest people. As important as aid is, as important as debt relief is, the opportunities generated by trade are far more significant. Unless the people of Africa and other poor countries have access to markets to sell their products, they will not escape poverty or be able to give their children a better future.

Uganda’s progress in reducing poverty from 1993 to 2006 is a remarkable story of success that has been well told. The narrative of Uganda’s continued, albeit it slightly slower, progress in reducing poverty since 2006 is less familiar. This was a period in which growth slowed as the gains from reforms years earlier had been fully realized, and weak infrastructure and increasing corruption increasingly constrained private sector competitiveness (World Bank 2015). This report examines Uganda’s progress in reducing poverty, with a specific focus on the period 2006 to 2013.

This study discusses the impact of economic geography and (low) population density on development outcomes in Mali and explores how policies to reduce poverty can be made more effective by taking these two factors into account. The crisis in north Mali which started in 2012 and continues to date has brought questions of economic geography to the center of attention.

Africa's growing demand for food has been met increasingly by imports from the global market. This, coupled with rising global food prices, brings ever-mounting food import bills. In addition, population growth and changing demand patterns will double demands over the next 10 years. Two key issues must be addressed: (a) establishing a consistent and stable policy environment for regional trade in fertilizers; and (b) investing in institutions that reduce the transaction costs of coordination failures.

In sub-Saharan Africa women comprise a large proportion of the agricultural labor force, yet they are consistently found to be less productive than male farmers. The gender gap in agricultural productivity-measured by the value of agricultural produce per unit of cultivated land-ranges from 4-25 percent, depending on the country and the crop.1 The World Bank Africa Gender Innovation Lab, UN Women, and the UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Initiative jointly produced a report to quantify the cost of the gender gap and the potential gains from closing that gap in Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Agriculture is the economic foundation of many Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries, employing about 60 percent of the workforce and contributing an average of 30 percent of gross domestic product. Yet agricultural growth rates for SSA declined in the 2000 and food insecurity remains a concern, with malnourishment only dropping from 34 to 30 percent in two decades. Various projections suggest that food production must increase by 70-100 percent by 2050 to meet the demands of a world with 9 billion people and changing diets.