Climate change is a critical issue
facing the countries of the Nile basin. While individual
weather events are difficult to attribute to climate change,
their sum is already having adverse effects on socioeconomic
conditions across the region. While climate change was not
an overt focus of the Nile basin initiative’s (NBI’s)
mandate when it was launched in 1999, it has emerged as a
key challenge for countries of the Nile to take seriously.

The contribution of women to labor in
African agriculture is regularly quoted in the range of 60
to 80 percent. Using individual-disaggregated, plot-level
labor input data from nationally representative household
surveys across six Sub-Saharan African countries, this study
estimates the average female labor share in crop production
at 40 percent. It is slightly above 50 percent in Malawi,
Tanzania, and Uganda, and substantially lower in Nigeria (37

This report summarizes the knowledge
shared and issues raised during a conference convened by the
World Bank on the above topic held on November 3-5, 2014 in
Manila, Philippines. Building on earlier conferences on this
topic, the conference aimed to raise awareness about, and
share good practice on, building a social protection system
that integrates disaster risk management and climate change
adaptation. It brought together 17 country delegations from

This program document presents the World
Bank Group (WBG) FY17-22 Country Partnership Framework (CPF)
for Bulgaria. The timing of the new CPF follows the
preparation of theSystematic Country Diagnostic (SCD)
prepared in FY15, and informs the areas and objectives ofthe
CPF in support of the WBG’s twin goals to reduce poverty and
boost shared prosperity1 for the bottom forty percent of the
population. The CPF proposes to focus WBG support in

This report focuses on two competing forces: the Soviet industrial legacy and

Watershed management has come to be
recognized as a critical issue in the Nile Basin. Upstream
land use can cause degradation and soil erosion, resulting
in lower agricultural yields locally and causing
sedimentation downstream. The increased sediment load causes
economic problems by reducing water quality, and irrigation
and hydropower potential, as well as increasing flooding.
This note shows how, through Basin-wide cooperation, the

This paper reviews international
practices for ‘bottom-up costing’ for medium-term
expenditure frameworks. Medium-term expenditure frameworks
are important because they incorporate the multi-annual
nature of the fiscal policy into the budget process,
mitigating its short-term bias. They also allow for the
incorporation of the effects of policy decisions and provide
for a comprehensive fiscal sustainability picture. However,

After years of strong performance in the
run-up to the European Union (EU) accession, Bulgaria’s
growth has slowed down and poverty remains the highest in
the EU. Bulgaria achieved the highest recorded growth rates
between 2000-08 on the back of exceptionally high capital
inflows, structural reforms, sound fiscal management and the
prospects of EU accession. Employment boomed and poverty
fell steeply. Since 2008 – the year of global economic

Self-help groups (SHGs) are the most
common form of microfinance in India. The authors provide
evidence that SHGs, composed of women only, undertake
collective actions for the provision of public goods within
village communities. Using a theoretical model, this paper
shows that an elected official, whose aim is to maximize
re-election chances, exerts higher effort in providing
public goods when private citizens undertake collective

This study was undertaken under the
leadership of the Ministry of Finance and Economic
Development (MOFED) to assess fiduciary risks in using
country financial management (FM) systems in full, or in
part, for implementing Donor and Bank-financed investment
projects in Zimbabwe and to identify risk mitigation
measures required for such use. Fiduciary risk is the risk
that Bank funds (or donor funds) will not be used for their

This paper informs the national and
international policy discussions related to the adoption of
the United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and
Forest Degradation Programme. Effective program instruments
must carefully consider incentives, opportunity costs, and
community interactions. A choice experiment survey was
applied to rural Ethiopian communities to understand
respondents’ preferences toward the institutional structure

Africa is rapidly urbanizing and will
lead the world’s urban growth in the coming decades.
Currently, Africa is the least‐urbanized continent,
accommodating 11.3 percent of the world’s urban population,
and the Sub‐Saharan region is the continent’s
least‐urbanized area. However, the region’s cities are
expanding rapidly, by 2050; Africa’s urban population is
projected to reach 1.2 billion, with an urbanization rate of