The African Capacity Building Initiative Toward Improved Policy Analysis And Development Management

The objective of the African Capacity Building Initiative is to build and strengthen local capabilities for policy analysis and development management in Sub-Saharan Africa. This report examines the nature and magnitude of the problem, which basically consists of a shortage of development management skills combined with weakness in the area of policy formation in Sub-Saharan Africa. The report describes the African Capacity Building Initiative and presents an action program designed to meet its goals. The management and operational structure of this program, whose ultimate objective is substantially improved indigenous analysis and management of Africa's economic and development processes, is outlined. (DB)

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.

This title was first published in 2000. Super-optimizing analysis deals with public policy problems by finding an alternative that enables conservatives, liberals and other viewpoints to come out ahead of their expectations simultaneously. This text explores the ideas and seeks to make super-optimum solutions a matter of routine.

Anticipating the auspicious convergence of his 60th birthday and the 30th anniversary of his professorial debut, Ali A. Mazrui's students, friends, and colleagues seized the opportunity to critically assess the significance of the prodigious body of scholarship affectionately dubbed "Mazruiana". In November 1992, in Seattle, Washington, four panels devoted exclusively to Mazruiana were convened at the annual meetings of the African Studies Association, with the added attraction of Mazrui's attendance at the convocation and his immediate personal response to the original papers presented there. While no single volume could do justice to Mazrui's colossal literary output, here at least is gathered the collective investigative insight of a team of well-informed critics into select, salient facets of this provocative but stimulating literary and intellectual phenomenon. The long list of contributors to this Festschrift includes: John W. Harbeson, Dunstan M. Wai, Darryl C. Thomas, Negussay Ayele, Parviz Morewedge, Hussein M. Adam, Alamin M. Mazrui, Claude E. Welch, Peter N. Thuynsma, Richard L. Sklar, Betty J. Craige, Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, Chaly Sawere, Bujor Avari, Diana Frank, Omari H. Kokole, and Ali A. Mazrui himself.