French edition. World Bank Technical Paper No. 298F (Les filles et lécole en Afrique subsaharienne: De lanalyse á laction). Summarizes the factors that constrain girls schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa and outlines practical ways of designing programs that will accelerate female participation in education in the region. Also available in English: (ISBN 0-8213-3373-9) Stock No. 13373.

Private sector activity is crucial for development. It shapes the investment climate, mobilizes innovation and financing in areas such as global health, and can either cause or mitigate social and environmental harm. Yet so far, the international development debate has not focused on the role of the private sector. This volume—written by members of the private sector, philanthropic organizations, and academia—investigates ways to galvanize the private sector in the fight against global poverty. Using a bottom-up approach, they describe how the private sector affects growth and poverty alleviation. They also review the impediments to private capital investment, and discuss various approaches to risk mitigation, including public sector enhancements, and identify some specific new plans for financing development in neglected markets, including an equity-based model for financing small-to-medium-sized enterprises. From the top-down, the authors look at the social and environmental impact of private sector activities, investigate public-private partnerships, explore new perspectives on the role of multinationals, and discuss an in-depth case study of these issues as they relate to global public health. In addition to providing a broad overview of the current issues, this forward-looking volume assesses the action-oriented initiatives that already exist, and provides templates and suggestions for new initiatives and partnerships. Contributors include David DeFerranti (Brookings Institution), Timothy Freundlich (Calvert Social Investment Foundation), Ross Levine (World Bank), Sylvia Mathews (Gates Foundation), Jane Nelson (Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government), Alan Patricof (APAX Partners), Warrick Smith (World Bank), and Julie Sunderland (APAX Partners).

Many Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries, like Benin, have scaled up public investment during the last decade. Such a strategy contributed to the improvement of infrastructure, but also to a build-up of debt vulnerabilities. Looking forward, the planned fiscal consolidation will result in some restraint of public spending, and, in particular, public investment. In this context, maintaining or even raising the region’s economic growth will require an offset by the private sector. The analysis draws lessons from countries that have successfully transitioned from public investment to private investment-led growth using a global sample starting in the mid-1980s. These lessons highlight policies that have been crucial in fostering a rebound of private investment in the wake of a contraction of public investment. The analytical framework proposed by Hausman, Rodrik and Velasco (2005) is used to identify and classify such policies. Finally, the paper analyses how the identified policies could help Benin achieving a smooth transition from public to private sector-led growth.

Poland is rapidly developing a reasonable legal framework to support its transition to a market economy. Yet legal practice lags behind. Precedent and expertise must be built through training and experience.

Given the reality of China's economic development and urbanization, this book studies the development of the private sector and the process of regional urbanization in the Yangtze River Delta region to provide a path for new urbanization throughout China.

This paper contains two separate but intimately linked reports that deal with corporate social responsibility. The first explores the critical success factors supporting the integration of social concerns into the planning and implementation of privately financed projects in the mining, oil, and gas sectors. The second reviews corporate practices with respect to social and environmental assessment, and the integration between the two.