United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, addressed the WTO's Third Global Review of Aid for Trade in Geneva on July 19th. He urged the donors to maintain their support of "Aid for Trade." These efforts help developing countries, especially the poorest, accelerate their development and benefit from economic growth.
Aid for Trade was launched by the World Trade Organization (WTO) more than five years ago and it specifically helps developing countries develop trade-related skills and infrastructure in order to benefit from WTO agreements and expand trade.
Ban stated that Aid for Trade is crucial for building global partnerships and for global development.
However, with the economic decline, budgets are tight. "this is no excuse for letting up our efforts," stated Ban. The Secretary-General stressed the need to pay attention to the needs of the least developed countries and ensure that they are not left behind.
Another main topic of the speech was the necessity of sustainable development. "Meeting our development goals is ultimately about building self-sufficiency and helping people feed themselves," said Ban.
Just a day before Agriculture Ministers from G-20 countries convene in France to discuss how to resolve the issue of global food price volatility and its effect on development, The World Bank has launched a risk management tool that can protect the food producers and consumers from the negative effect of price volatility. The risk management tool called The Agriculture Price Risk Management product, or APRM, will initially be deployed by the International Finance Corp. and JPMorgan Chase. Both IFC and JPMorgan will commit $200 million worth of credit exposure each to clients using specific price hedging products which will protect them from price volatility.
The World Bank President Robert Zoellick said “With this new tool, we can help farmers, food producers, and consumers protect themselves against price swings, strengthen their credit position, and increase their access to finance. This tool shows what sensible financial engineering can do: make lives better for the poor.” IFC expects to partner with other banks in the future as well in order to provide the poor farmers with the risk management tool.
The World Bank is about to launch an initiative in order to address what has become not only a big problem of management but also one of the big excuses for countries and people not to donate to development efforts: corruption, inefficiency and mismanagement, in this case in the construction sector. OECD estimates that these three factors add some 10-30% to the total value of any given construction project; but they also mean less building quality, which can deteriorate users living conditions or even costs lives in regions vulnerable to natural hazards like earthquakes, floods or hurricanes. The construction sector is one of the less transparent and prone to corruption due to the big amount of transactions and contractors involved and its tendency to bribe politicians and officials and to influence the political sphere of a country.
This new initiative will try to tackle the problem by enhancing transparency, efficiency, accountability and expert management and design to construction projects and their associated administrative processes. The construction sector is one of the most important for developing nations, since it is the one in charge of building and maintaining infrastructures and housing, widely seen as pillars of development. The initiate is supposed to include construction companies, governments and civil society in making the sector more transparent and efficient.
British foreign aid agency (DFID) has already conducted a $7.3 million pilot project called Construction Sector Transparency Initiative (CoST) involving eight nations that joined voluntarily: United Kingdom, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Malawi, Tanzania, Philippines, Zambia and Vietnam. Several other countries are interested in CoST, which has attracted far more countries than intended when it was initially designed. So far, the results have been good, despite some loses detected, which are attributed to poor design or lack of capacities of the participant countries administrations. Still, CoST "fathers" state that the project has the potential to change for better the whole international construction sector. Maybe that is why the World Bank will take CoST as the seed of its own worldwide initiative against corruption in the construction sector. If this initiative succeeds, it will mean a major boost for developing nations, since it will attract more investors by saving time, money, and most importantly, lives.
Today we celebrate the International World Water Day. This event has been celebrated every 22nd March since it was designated so by the UN General Assembly in 1993, as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and sustainable management of water resources.
Each year the International World Water Day highlights one particular aspect of water. This year it regards water and urbanisation, with the motto "Water for Cities: responding to the urban challenge." In the past years, other subjects were treated, such as water scarcity, sanitation, water quality, transboundary waters, disasters, or water and culture. More than 800 events are taking place today to commemorate this day, being the main one located in Capetown, South Africa. A number of agreements and treaties are being signed this day too, like a Memorandum of Understanding to face water challenges between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick.
Two weeks ago, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that it was a matter of national interest that the US keeps supporting the World Bank and other multilateral development organizations. These contributions mean just a 5% of the whole foreign assistance budget, but they can mobilize funds that add up more than 150% of the budget. Therefore, funding the World Bank and other development banks such is one of the most cost-effective ways the US has to promote its interests in developing countries.
But there are also main economic security concerns in this warning. According to Timothy Geithner, a real risk can be found in withdrawing US funds from these organizations, (and development aid in general): that the US place can be taken by other countries, like China. Several Senators and Representatives have expressed their concerns about China's quick economical expansion in places like South America, Africa or Asia. A step back in foreign aid funding will inevitably cede influence to China and other rising powers, as for many countries the only alternative to the World Bank is actually China.
The World Bank has committed to fund development projects to help Africa meet and sustain Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) beyond 2015. Speaking in a meeting to celebrate Africa Capacity Building Foundation's 20th anniversary in Kigali, Rwanda on Wednesday, the Managing Director of the World Bank said that the World Bank would double its annual aid to Africa to help the continent meet the MDGs. The Bank said that its funding would target the key sectors of agriculture, health and education.
The Bank also said that the continent's economy is expected to grow some 6% this year, and it is important to maintain the progress in capacity development with particular focus on youth and women programs. The meeting was also attended by heads of State and development institutions in Africa.
Public voting has just been opened on the World Bank's Apps for Development Competition. With this competition, for the first time the World Bank opened its catalogue of development data to the general public and developer communities so that they can use the data and create tools, games, apps or analysis to solve the global issues. All the submissions were required to use the World Bank data, and work for Millennium Development Goals including global poverty, education, health, gender equality and environmental sustainability. The competition received 107 submissions from 36 countries after it started in October, 2010, and the submissions included SMS services and children's game for the iPhone as well as educational and statistical modelling tools. Although the final winners will be determined by a panel of experts, people can still vote on the Popular Choice category.
This program is a part of the World Bank's Open Data initiative which attempts to connect the available resources with a talented pool of professionals so that experts can come up with innovative strategies to solve global issues. You can also vote for your preferred apps at the competition website,
Almost 20,000 people played and completed a World Bank Institute funded interactive game over a 10-week period this spring, called EVOKE, centered around discovering solutions for real world problems such as environmental degradation, lack of food, water scarcity, poverty and violence. Unlike other alternate reality games, gamers in EVOKE earn points by completing real-world tasks such as volunteering, researching an issue, or developing solutions for a real world problem. They then submit evidence of their work in a picture, video or blog form which is then reviewed by fellow gamers who can award them further power-ups in categories like creativity, collaboration, sustainability and courage.
Urgent Evoke was created by Jane McGonigal from the Institute for the Future. McGonigal wrote her thesis concluding that if people played more addictive games, like World of Warcraft, and learned problem solving skills that could be applied to the real world, our society would be better equipped to handle large-scale problems. She has developed multiple games that take the addictive nature of gaming and combine it with games that require people to make real world impacts.
The game was targeted towards people in Africa and hopes to inspire further innovation in poorer countries. Many people argued that internet access isn't widespread enough to do so. However, the game could also be accessed on cell phones and ended up being very successful worldwide. People from 150 countries registered to play and submitted over 23,500 blog posts, 4,700 photos and over 1,500 videos highlighting challenges and solutions to the development issues featured each week. The World Bank institute launched an ad campaign in South Africa to encourage people to play, and funded the project with $500,000.
The winners of the game will be mentored by business leaders and experienced social innovators and given seed funding to further develop their concepts. A summit of the games most innovative players will be held in September, 2010 in Washington DC to celebrate the achievements of the EVOKE class of 2010, and to discuss the future of EVOKE. The World Bank Institute hopes to sponsor an Arabic version of the game next year, as well as a sequel to the original.
Recently the World Bank has urged the Filipino government to triple its spending on subsidies for poor families. The subsidies come through the Conditional Cash Transfer program (CCT) within the social welfare department. The program, similar to many family assistance strategies, provides monthly food allowances to families that meet basic requirements such as keeping their children in school.
The World Bank contends that one of the most effective approaches to reduce poverty is through direct investment in human capital, and therefore the Filipino government should extend the CCT program to 3 million more families.
Although the Philippines currently suffer a large budget deficit, the World Bank suggests a re-appropriation of subsidy funds into the welfare department, but also states that the World Bank is willing to augment their own funds to expand the CCT Program.
The worst cholera crisis in Zimbabwe is finally seeing significant improvement. Unfortunately, however, the upcoming rainy season poses a major threat to the eradication of the disease. Since cholera is a water-borne illness, the first rains might create problems when it causes contaminated water to flow towards the open sources where people go to drink. Hopefully, this year's $22 million grant from the World Bank will help the country in its struggle against the failing economy and cholera.
Mozambique recently received a $44.6 million credit towards improving healthcare from the World Bank. This money will fund the 2009-2014 Government of Mozambique's Health Service Delivery Project. The project will include the construction of 20 new healthcare centers, along with housing for health workers. Along with that, the project will establish community outreach programs educating people about disease prevention and healthy lifestyles. With the help of this new funding, Mozambique will be further on its way to acheiving the 4th and 5th Millennium Development Goals concerning child and maternal mortality, as well as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other disease prevention. Source: World Bank
World Bank recently finished a study in which they interviewed 60,000 people in 15 different countries about the obstacles in getting oneself out of poverty. The study concluded that the inability to escape it is not due to a lack of will or perseverance, but rather a lack of opportunity. Those who have successfully risen out of poverty have done so as a result of hard work, but also because of access to jobs and markets. To help others escape poverty, the study concludes that it is important to improve access to telephones, roads, electricity, irrigation, loans to be used for production, business skills, and information on how to connect to markets.
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