The Executive Board of the World Bank approved on July 5 a Poverty Reduction Support Credit* (PRSC-7) in the amount of US$90 million to Burkina Faso. The credit will have a significant positive impact on poverty reduction and accelerate economic growth.

Rapid economic growth has spurred progress in the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger in Asia, where the proportion of people living on a dollar a day has been cut by half, but inequality is also growing in parts of the region, says a United Nations report released today in Bangkok.

Desertification, exacerbated by climate change, represents “the greatest environmental challenge of our times” and governments must overhaul policy approaches to the issue or face mass migrations of people driven from degraded homelands within a single generation, warns a new analysis from the United Nations University.

On 28 June the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors approved an International Development Association (IDA) credit[1]of US$40 million to support Benin’s poverty reduction strategy.

The 4th Balkan Poverty Reduction Strategies Forum Focus on Poverty and Energy Issues

As World Bank Board Approves Landmark Assistance Strategy and Two New Projects
The Board of Executive Directors of the World Bank in June 22nd discussed its new Country Program for Ghana, representing US$1.3 billion for new operations based on the Ghana Joint Assistance Strategy (G-JAS) signed by 16 partners.

In April 2007, the General Assembly of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations convened to discuss progress made towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Patrick Webb, PhD, dean for academic affairs at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, presented on the status of the Millennium Development Goal One (MDG1): radically reducing extreme poverty and hunger.

The World Bank approved on June 14 a credit of US$63 million equivalent from the International Development Association (IDA) to the Indian state of Bihar, designed to enhance social and economic empowerment of rural poor people in the state.

Leaders of the G8 group of industrial nations have ended three days of meetings in the German Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm with a compromise on global warming and renewed pledges for Africa.

Hundreds of people from West Africa are gathering in Sikasso, Mali, this week, to bring attention to problems they say developed countries are ignoring. The anti-globalization and anti-poverty campaigners call their meeting a people's poverty forum that is intended to counter the G-8 summit of the world's wealthiest countries this week in Germany.

Finalists in 'Marketplace' of Innovative Poverty Reduction Projects Coming to Washington