The Roma people are Europe’s largest ethnic minority, comprising six million European Union citizens. But many of the Roma in the EU are victims of persistent prejudice and discrimination and face daily poverty and social exclusion.
In 2011, the EU Heads of State and Government adopted the EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020 to close the gap between Roma and non-Roma in access to education, employment, healthcare and housing. All Member States were charged with tailoring their strategies to meet the needs of the Roma population in their country.
A recent report reveals both progress made and areas for improvement.
In education, the EU Commission called on Member States to ensure, at a minimum, primary school completion, widened access to quality early childhood education and care, efforts to keep Roma children from being subject to discrimination or segregation and a reduction in the number of early school leavers.
The report reveals a positive general trend in the area of access to quality early childhood education and care. “In Finland for example, within ten years, the participation of Roma children in pre-primary school increased from 2% to 60%. The same applies to Hungary, where the enrollment rate of Roma children in preschool is high (79%) and is likely to further improve,” the report states.
Other issues, such as early school leavers, require additional efforts to address problems such as a lack of proper paperwork for children whose families move around a lot. “The Commission’s assessment confirms that sustained efforts can bring about a significant impact on the situation of Roma in education,” the report states. “For example, in three years (2010-2013), a Bulgarian educational project has brought down the number of children who dropped out of school by almost 80%.”
Less encouraging have been EU efforts to improve employment among the Roma population. “In some cases, the employment situation of Roma has even further deteriorated, although this is partly due to the general increase of unemployment in several EU Member States over the past few years,” the report states. “Within this context, Roma, and to an even larger extent Roma women, have been particularly affected as they often lack marketable skills and qualifications.”
Discrimination often plays a role in making it more difficult for the Roma people to attain employment. Successful programs were noted however, in Bulgaria, France, and Hungary, where countries worked with other organizations to set up community development centers, language classes, and labor market counseling among other services.
Providing better access to healthcare and housing to the Roma people has also proven difficult due to barriers such as distance to health services, lack of financial resources, lack of communication between Roma and non-Roma constituents, and the need for more integrated housing.
Most Member States have begun initiatives to raise awareness about Roma culture and history; in particular, in recent years, a growing number have organized activities to commemorate the Roma Holocaust, the report states. The report however encourages Member States to develop more effective measures to combat anti-Roma rhetoric and hate speech.
Last year Irish journalist, Barbara McCarthy, explored what it would be like to spend the day begging for money on the streets of Dublin dressed as a Roma person. “I kept my eyes to the ground out of fear of people,” she reported. “I felt really sorry for the person I was pretending to be.”
– Katherine Martin
Sources: European Commission , Independent.ie, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC,
Photo: Pers Blog
Improving Global Health Opportunities: India’s Tremendous Progress
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has helped save millions of lives among the world’s poor. Through their work, they are helping to find a way to stop the spread of global health diseases such as polio and malaria and support initiatives for proper sanitation.
Recently, there has been a great deal of success with projects like these in India. The country has been certified polio-free for over a year. To meet the requirements, the country had to go four years without a case of wild poliovirus. “This is a giant achievement in the global effort to eradicate polio,” according to an article on the Gates Foundation blog called Impatient Optimists. “As recently as 2009, India was home to nearly half the world’s cases and considered the hardest place on earth to stop the disease.”
To stay polio-free, India must maintain its high levels of immunity. In partnership with the government, the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF conduct two nationwide, as well as three sub-national, vaccination campaigns annually.
Where malaria is concerned, India is also making progress; having halved the number of its cases from two million in 2000 to 882,000 in 2013, according to WHO. The country is working towards the eradication of malaria through powerful campaign tactics and ensuring that rapid response diagnostic tests are available and easily accessible.
India is hoping to reach a pre-elimination phase of malaria in 2017 and to then move forward to total elimination by 2030.
In addition to eradicating these infectious diseases, efforts are being made to improve sanitation conditions to reduce illness and death. For example, in some parts of the country as many as 80 percent of the population do not own a toilet, which can be expensive to purchase and install. However open defecation can lead to diarrheal disease. More than 450,000 children died from the disease in 2014. Women and girls are also put in danger of being raped when they go off to find a private place to use the restroom.
Thanks to microfinance loans through the Centre for Development Orientation and Training (CDOT), families are able to purchase a toilet and improve their living conditions.
Through organizations like WHO, UNICEF, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, incredible feats for global health are being reached in India and all around the world.
– Drusilla Gibbs
Sources: Impatient Optimists 1, Impatient Optimists 2, Impatient Optimists 3, WHO
Photo: hydratelife
World Bank Grants $11.6 Million for Sahel Women
On April 23, 2015, The World Bank Group granted the Sahel Women’s Empowerment and Demographic Dividend Project (SWEDD) $11.6 million, and an additional $23.2 million credit, to include Burkina Faso into the program.
Due to the political instability in Burkina Faso late October 2014, negotiations to add Burkina Faso to the SWEDD project were delayed. Currently, Burkina Faso is the sixth Sahelian country to be added to the project; others include: Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.
The Sahel region would gain a great economic boost from a demographic dividend through a rapid decline in fertility and infant mortality rates; the addition of Burkina Faso expands the effectiveness of SWEDD.
The program aims to increase access to reproductive, child and maternal health services for women and adolescent girls in participating countries in the Sahel region of Africa. SWEDD also intends to educate women on gender and their own reproductive health.
In Burkina Faso, the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is 5.8. With only 15 percent of married women aged 15-49 using contraception the maternal mortality ratio, per 100,000 live births, is 300. Moreover, the under-5 mortality rate, per 1,000 live births, is 108.
The high fertility rate, which worsens population pressure, coupled with poor health services are preventing Burkina Faso from garnering the benefits from a demographic dividend.
Burkina Faso’s involvement in the Sahel Women’s Empowerment promises great outcomes. The issue of child marriage in Burkina Faso is linked to poverty, the tradition of gender inequality and lack of education.
Involving women in the working age population will accelerate Burkina Faso’s demographic dividend because comparably the number of dependents would be lower.
SWEDD will empower women in Burkina Faso through promoting their academic education, and involving more women in life-skills programs, making women more independent.
This will consequently decrease the child marriage rates, which are at an 86 percent prevalence in the Sahel region of Burkina Faso, and 76 percent in the East region.
World Bank Country Manager for Burkina Faso commented on the addition of Burkina Faso to the Sahel Women’s Empowerment Project saying: “Educating adolescent girls and improving health services for women will certainly reduce poverty and boost shared prosperity in Burkina Faso.”
– Marie Helene Ngom
Sources: The World Bank 1, The World Bank 2, Sahel Women Empowerment Outline, Burkina Faso Child Marriage
Photo: Wikimedia
Darden Harvest Aims to Put an End to Hunger
Darden Restaurants, owner of restaurants like Olive Garden and Red Lobster, believes people are their most valuable resource. That being said, they have dedicated much of their time and money to helping end world hunger and poverty.
Their program, Darden Harvest, coordinates food donations to food banks and other charitable organizations across the country.
How it works:
When leftover foods from restaurants are not served to guests, it is packaged, frozen and stored in the restaurant. Nonprofit organizations travel to these restaurants weekly to pick up the food and then donate it to food banks.
The food is then served to those in need in the community. Throughout this process, the quality and safety of the food is ensured by Darden Restaurants’ employees.
What is donated?
Darden Restaurants focuses on donating foods that have a positive impact on health. Twenty-eight percent of the foods donated are vegetables, 27 percent are proteins, 19 percent are soups, 18 percent are pastas and breads, and eight percent are other food items and desserts.
Community Impact:
Since it started in 2003, Darden Harvest has donated more than six million pounds of surplus food to families in need, which is the equivalent of 89 million meals served. Nearly 49 million Americans suffer from hunger, with over 165 million dollars’ worth of food being thrown into landfills each year.
Every year, Darden Harvest observes World Food Day by positively impacting the lives of underprivileged people through food donations. In their 2013 fiscal year, Darden Restaurants donated over 11 million pounds of food to hunger-ridden families.
Darden Restaurants’ team of over 200,000 members has contributed to ending hunger. Just last month, Darden Restaurants created a program to help people feed their families during the busy school semester with their “Buy one, take one” program, which allows families to purchase one meal and take another one home to serve on another night.
– Julia Hettiger
Sources: CNN, Darden, Fool
Photo: Examiner
World Vision’s Literacy Boost Program
Since 2000, many victories have been made in the educational area, from increasing primary school enrollment by 8 percent in developing regions to the global literacy rate rising to more than 80 percent. But there is still a lot that can be accomplished in terms of improving literacy.
Through World Vision’s Literacy Boost program, educators, parents and community members are incorporated into children’s reading and writing education. The program is split into three categories: reading assessment, teacher training and community action.
The reading assessment is meant to establish a baseline of learning for students, giving teachers a better grasp of where their students are and giving them the ability to tailor curriculum to be the most effective.
In the classroom, Literacy Boost provides teacher training that ensures all teachers are fully literate and have a firm understanding of good teaching practices, and it stresses the value of teachers making learning fun for students. Studies have shown that children learn more effectively when they’re invested in course material and enjoying what they’re learning.
The Literacy Boost program also stresses the importance of continuing learning outside of the classroom. To do this, the program gives parents the tools necessary for helping their children read and write at home. Parents are also encouraged to use whatever is available to make reading a daily focus.
In Burundi, where only 64 percent of the population is literate, Literacy Boost volunteers have created necklaces with a piece of cardboard attached to the end with vowels written on it. The necklace is meant to help children whose parents are illiterate to practice their reading skills in the community with their literate neighbors.
This is where the community gets in on the action. From volunteering to create storybooks that are from the region of the children reading them to facilitating after-school activities, such as book clubs, the third pillar of community action ties everything together. In India, these book clubs have produced increased literacy levels among its members.
Since its start back in 2014, World Vision India has reported that the program has helped nearly 600 children in the program’s city of Lalitpur, with nearly 500 of them participating regularly in the book clubs.
Part of the success of the Indian book clubs is due to their 21 Book Banks, allowing children to borrow books to take home, teaching children to view reading as a fun pastime rather than a difficult school activity.
Linda Hiebert, senior director of Education and Life Skills at World Vision, emphasized the importance of reaching children early on in their education, establishing a solid foundation of literacy.
To do this, Literacy Boost has created a pre-primary school reading camp to give children a jump-start on their studies before they even step foot in a classroom. At the camp, children learn letters and vowels, preparing them to study a variety of subjects.
Thus far, the overall results have been promising. After a single year of the program, Bangladesh has achieved an improvement rate of reading comprehension of 40 percent, with other countries experiencing doubling and tripling of reading comprehension.
Through World Vision and Save the Children’s Partnership for Literacy campaign, the organizations are hoping to impact 1.5 million children in 15 sub-Saharan and South Asian countries by 2016, improving the lives of children today and future generations.
– Claire Colby
Sources: Canada News Wire, Our World in Data, World Vision 1, World Vision 2
Photo: Flickr
Global Alliance To Addressing Open Dumpsites
Due to a lack of investment in recycling infrastructure and an insufficiently trained workforce, most of the 42 million metric tons of e-waste generated in 2014 were discarded into open dumpsites.
This is according to the new report by the International Solid Waste Association (ISWA), “Waste health: The tragic case of dumpsites.”
The report, in which 373 toxic waste sites in India, Indonesia and the Philippines were analyzed, declared open dumpsites as a global health emergency affecting millions of people in developing countries who already lack sufficient sanitation infrastructure.
Results indicated that problems regarding open dump sites are still widespread in developing countries today, 40 years after such issues were originally developed.
On top of the existing concerns, the developing world is seeing an unparalleled rise in the unregulated dumping of discarded electronics and medical waste.
Overall, 40 percent of the world’s waste goes to open dumpsites, and the 50 largest sites affect 64 million people globally. The uncontrolled burning of the waste, which causes gases and toxins to be released into the air, is a substantial threat to human life.
Open dump sites also cause financial burdens, as their overall cost is in the tens of billions of dollars.
According to the report, almost nine million people are at risk of being exposed to lead, asbestos and other hazardous materials from the open dumpsites analyzed. Additionally, it was revealed that those open sites have a bigger impact on life expectancy than malaria.
Malaria causes a combined loss of 725,000 healthy years in India, Indonesia and the Philippines, whereas exposure to hazardous materials from open dumpsites is estimated to cause a loss of 829,000 healthy years.
As a result of the report, several officials called for a global alliance to address the problem of open dumpsites.
“The recommendations of this report are clear: the international community has an urgent task ahead in closing waste dumps globally, for the sake of populations affected by them because they live in or near them, but also because all the world’s people are breathing in the toxins released by burning on open dumps,” David Newman, the president of the ISWA, said in the foreword of the report.
– Matt Wotus
Sources: International Solid Waste Association, Resource Magazine,
Photo: care4kidsworldwide
Roma in the EU are Focus of Anti-Poverty Efforts
The Roma people are Europe’s largest ethnic minority, comprising six million European Union citizens. But many of the Roma in the EU are victims of persistent prejudice and discrimination and face daily poverty and social exclusion.
In 2011, the EU Heads of State and Government adopted the EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies up to 2020 to close the gap between Roma and non-Roma in access to education, employment, healthcare and housing. All Member States were charged with tailoring their strategies to meet the needs of the Roma population in their country.
A recent report reveals both progress made and areas for improvement.
In education, the EU Commission called on Member States to ensure, at a minimum, primary school completion, widened access to quality early childhood education and care, efforts to keep Roma children from being subject to discrimination or segregation and a reduction in the number of early school leavers.
The report reveals a positive general trend in the area of access to quality early childhood education and care. “In Finland for example, within ten years, the participation of Roma children in pre-primary school increased from 2% to 60%. The same applies to Hungary, where the enrollment rate of Roma children in preschool is high (79%) and is likely to further improve,” the report states.
Other issues, such as early school leavers, require additional efforts to address problems such as a lack of proper paperwork for children whose families move around a lot. “The Commission’s assessment confirms that sustained efforts can bring about a significant impact on the situation of Roma in education,” the report states. “For example, in three years (2010-2013), a Bulgarian educational project has brought down the number of children who dropped out of school by almost 80%.”
Less encouraging have been EU efforts to improve employment among the Roma population. “In some cases, the employment situation of Roma has even further deteriorated, although this is partly due to the general increase of unemployment in several EU Member States over the past few years,” the report states. “Within this context, Roma, and to an even larger extent Roma women, have been particularly affected as they often lack marketable skills and qualifications.”
Discrimination often plays a role in making it more difficult for the Roma people to attain employment. Successful programs were noted however, in Bulgaria, France, and Hungary, where countries worked with other organizations to set up community development centers, language classes, and labor market counseling among other services.
Providing better access to healthcare and housing to the Roma people has also proven difficult due to barriers such as distance to health services, lack of financial resources, lack of communication between Roma and non-Roma constituents, and the need for more integrated housing.
Most Member States have begun initiatives to raise awareness about Roma culture and history; in particular, in recent years, a growing number have organized activities to commemorate the Roma Holocaust, the report states. The report however encourages Member States to develop more effective measures to combat anti-Roma rhetoric and hate speech.
Last year Irish journalist, Barbara McCarthy, explored what it would be like to spend the day begging for money on the streets of Dublin dressed as a Roma person. “I kept my eyes to the ground out of fear of people,” she reported. “I felt really sorry for the person I was pretending to be.”
– Katherine Martin
Sources: European Commission , Independent.ie, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation SDC,
Photo: Pers Blog
The Poorest City in the World
A poor city in a wealthy country: Monrovia, Liberia.
In examination of the ten poorest cities in the world, all ten of them are in Africa. In a Western African country on the coast lies a city full of slums. Theorists suggest the poorest city in the world is in Monrovia, the capital city of Liberia. The population of Liberia is currently 4,294,000 and is one of the least populated countries in Africa. It is considered the fifth poorest country, despite being the oldest independent country.
The population suffers from poverty and hunger despite numerous political administrations and new policies being introduced. According to the United Nations’ The Food and Agriculture Organization, Liberia is a low-income and food-deficit country. Over half of the country’s population is food-insecure or highly vulnerable to food insecurity.
Twenty-nine percent of the population of the country live in Monrovia, for a total of 1,010,970 residents. At the turn of the century, 80 percent of the people living in the city were living in poverty. The gross national income is estimated at $790 USD annually. However, eighty-five percent of the population lives on less than one USD per day.
Conflict with q neighboring country, Sierra Leone, has had a major impact on the city. Despite the civil war that ended twelve years ago, the city still endures the effects. The constant turmoil between the two countries has caused the educational system to be broken down, abject poverty and inadequate educational access in these slums. The children of Monrovia continue to be subjected to the cycle of both poverty and illiteracy.
On the outskirts of the city, the agricultural sectors have major challenges that compound its poverty. There are low yields as a result of technological disadvantages. Inadequate roads and little to no access to markets limit the possible value chains. A majority of the people who live in these rural areas suffer from poverty.
In Monrovia, basic necessities are rarely available. Electricity and water resources are scarce and at best unreliable. Both the health care and social services are lacking. The GDP, the health expenditures is ten percent and the amount of health expenditures per capita is eight dollars USD annually. Slums are rampant with disease due to the flooding that has occurred. The streets of Monrovia are filthy, dangerous and unfinished, making it very unsafe to drive on them. The city lacks infrastructure and public transportation despite being the capital city. In Monrovia, the crime index is 82.81 and has a safety index of 17.19. Over the last three years, the crime rate has increased in the city.
Liberia is a country that is the home of many precious gem and diamond mines. Violent acts and war crimes are ongoing for power struggles over their control. This has left the city war-torn and vulnerable as a result of the exploitation of no true supply chain. The resource-rich country suffers from the pandemic of poverty and hunger. Monrovia is a city that depicts global poverty’s existence even in a naturally wealthy country.
– Erika Wright
Sources: AllAfrica, Nations Encyclopedia, NUMBEO, Rural Poverty Portal, The Richest, WHO
Photo: Flickr
Nature’s Answer to Antibiotic Resistance
Overuse of antibiotics throughout the world has led to a growing problem of antibiotic resistance that could lead to the total ineffectiveness of these often life-saving drugs. In the developing world, the problem is especially acute.
According to an article in the journal Nature, some studies have suggested that in Nigeria, as many as 88 percent of Staphylococcus aureus infections cannot be treated with methicillin — once a potent weapon against the microbe.
Antibiotic resistance is also a significant issue in the emerging economies known as the ‘BRIC’ states: Brazil, Russia, India and China, the article says, as well as in India and Pakistan.
The problem is especially worrisome to public health officials due to the lack of new antibiotic compounds introduced into medical practice.
But last January, researchers at Northeastern University and NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals announced they had developed a new potential antibiotic, called Teixobactin, that has some exciting new properties.
In addition to proving itself effective in the treatment of MRSA, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and M. Tuberculosis in animal efficacy trials, the compound has the potential to become resistance-proof.
Richard Novick, a microbiologist at New York University’s Langone Medical Center has called it “a major breakthrough because it is virtually certain to be effective for the multi-resistant strains that are now all but impossible to treat.”
Doctors are eager for new medicines to treat infectious diseases. In the past, most antibiotics were developed through screening soil samples for microorganisms. But soil samples eventually gave way to millions of dollars fruitlessly spent on synthetic attempts to produce antibiotics.
The team from Northeastern and Novobiotic decided to turn back to mining soil-based uncultured bacteria by using a new technology called Ichip. In this approach, soil samples are diluted with agar, allowing a single bacterial cell to be isolated. Researchers are able to isolate up to 96 cells in individual “chambers” in each Ichip device. Teixobactin was discovered from a soil sample from Maine.
Seventy years of antimicrobial use and overuse have given bacteria ample time to genetically fortify themselves for a new wave of infectious disease. Now, the CDC estimates that antibiotic-resistant bacteria will infect two million people and among those two million, 23,000 will die from those infections.
The techniques used to extract Teixobactin from the Maine soil sample have opened up millions of microorganisms for future study. Ichip allows researchers to harness this biodiversity in traditionally rich environments such as forest soil and even marsh water.
“This biodiversity is also hiding a lot of chemical diversity that may include new, other antibiotics,” wrote Gerard Wright, director of the Institute for Infectious Disease Research in Canada.
– Emma Betuel
Sources: The Scientist, Nature 1, The Lancet, Nature 2, ACS, CDC, Popsci
Photo: medicaldaily
Tackling Income Inequality in Asia-Pacific Region
Policies that support quality education and provide social protection are investments that can help stem rising income inequality in the Asia Pacific, according to Axel Van Trotsenburg, the World Bank Vice President for East Asia and the Pacific who spoke recently at a meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) finance ministers in Cebu, Phillippines during a session called “Global Economic and Financial Outlook, Growing Inequality and Regional Connectivity.”
For poverty-stricken households, labor is often the sole asset they depend on. However, Van Trotsenburg said that if labor were to be made more productive through quality education and the addition of skills training, inclusive growth could begin to happen.
Van Trotsenburg suggested focusing education policies on quality teaching and better learning outcomes. The goal would be to reach youth in their primary and secondary school years.
Education initiatives alone could produce significant improvements for the livelihoods of the poor and reduce income inequality. But additional social protection measures can greatly support and enhance these efforts, significantly improving people’s lives, he said.
For example, conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs can raise school attendance, preventive health care and nutrition among the poor and vulnerable. CCT programs have been successful in places like the Philippines, Mexico, Peru and Chile.
In 2010, The Economist magazine praised CCT programs for their effectiveness. “The programs have spread because they work. They cut poverty. They improve income distribution. And they do so cheaply.”
Despite growth in middle-income East Asian households, poverty and class divide are still very present throughout the region. Van Trotsenburg describes the complexities of the situation:
“In middle-income East Asia, rapid, inclusive growth enabled hundreds of millions to lift themselves out of poverty. Yet, there are still challenges. The bottom 40 percent of the region’s population – almost 800 million people – still live on less than $3 a day in terms of purchasing power parity. These people might fall right back into poverty if the global economy takes a turn for the worse, or if they face health, food-price and other shocks.”
He urged APEC members to continue or accelerate economic reforms to sustain growth that will increase the living standard of those at the bottom of the income distribution.
In particular, he advocated for physical infrastructure investments. “In this region, 142 million households still have no access to electricity while 600 million people lack access to adequate sanitation,” he said. “It will be very important for greater investment to be accompanied by increases in efficiency of such expenditure. And this points in turn to the importance of strengthening institutions, including through public financial management reforms.”
– Nikki Schaffer
Sources: World Bank, Economist
Photo: jonahkessel
Improving Land Management for Economic Growth In Uganda
According to a recent World Bank report, economic growth in Uganda may continue to develop if the country institutes better land management strategies. “A more effective system of land governance, including for registering land, strengthening institutions for resolving disputes and urban planning, will boost productivity and transform livelihoods in Uganda,” the report states.
The World Bank released the sixth edition of the Uganda Economic Update, entitled “Searching for the Grail – Can Uganda’s Land Support its Prosperity Drive?” It points out that improving land management will help Uganda to achieve commercialization of agriculture and urbanization.
In Uganda, around 20 percent of the total land is registered, which is higher than the average level of 10 percent for sub-Saharan African countries. However, the current system of land tenure makes it difficult to transform land uses to spur higher levels of productivity.
For starters, unclear property rights lead to difficulty in transferring ownership as well as a large number of disputes and conflicts. Due to the unclear land rights, 37 percent of individually owned land cannot be sold; 34 percent cannot be rented and 44 percent cannot be used as security for a loan.
Another problem is that current land policies and systems are too weak to efficiently implement urban planning and reduce the cost of infrastructure development in the country. The report states that compared with most major cities worldwide, which derive revenue from land to finance their infrastructure development, Uganda hasn’t fully applied land value capture tools, such as development fees, land auctions and property taxation, into its system of land management.
According to the World Bank report, Uganda’s population is expected to increase from 35 million to over 70 million by 2040, and there will be about 388 more people increased on every square kilometer of arable land. Uganda’s rapidly expanding population is putting pressure on land usage, especially in urban areas.
“With the fast-growing urban population, Uganda needs to enforce the existing policies to promote better urban land management that will allow them to build livable cities.” Said Christina Malmberg Calvo, World Bank Country Manager. “For Uganda, key among these would include land value capture to finance urban infrastructure.”
The report states that the Ugandan government can promote more efficient land use to support the healthy transformation of the agricultural sector and a shift towards higher-value economic activities located in urban areas by taking the following four actions:
According to Calvo, the Ugandan government has begun the process of systematically registering land and improving land information management. By accelerating these activities and the overall reform programs, she says the country would raise the share of land that has secure rights and ease the process of transferring land. These measures to improve land management will contribute to spurring long-term economic growth and transformation in Uganda.
– Shengyu Wang
Sources: Daily Monitor, World Bank
Photo: Flickr