World Bank praises poverty reduction efforts

The World Bank praised Tanzania on Friday for making concerted efforts in poverty reduction, saying that its push to harmonise donor efforts in the country should be seen as a model for other developing nations. "What stands out is the strong government leadership in the whole effort," the World Bank country director for Tanzania and Uganda, Judy O'Connor, said. "The harmonisation between the World Bank and the United Nations system here in Tanzania should be seen as a model in terms of poverty reduction," she said. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative and the coordinator of the UN system in Tanzania, John Hendra, said that this type of partnership had not been seen in any other country. O'Connor and Hendra were speaking at the conclusion of a two-day meeting to discuss the World Bank and the UN system performance review in Dar es Salaam, the Tanzanian commercial capital. Tanzania's efforts have been rewarded with substantial funding from the Bretton Woods institution. After Ethiopia, the East African country is Africa's second largest recipient of World Bank funding, and O'Connor recently announced that the Bank intended to provide Tanzania with a new grant of US $70 million for HIV/AIDS-related projects. According to the Ministry of Finance, the World Bank currently has 22 projects in Tanzania, with commitments totalling $1.3 billion.