October 21, 2007 (LPAC)--The World Bank is making a shift in its policy towards Africa, to an emphasis on small-scale agriculture which will supposedly serve as a motor for development of African countries, as well as increased emphasis on a transition to low-carbon economies. At the IMF/World Bank annual meeting in Washington, D.C., World Bank President Robert Zoellick today won support from Bank member countries for his strategy for the next five years, according to a Reuters report. The IMF/World Bank annual meeting will end tomorrow.

The Bank's annual World Development Report, released during the week preceding the annual meeting, noted that "A greater focus on agriculture will boost overall growth and can offer multiple pathways out of poverty." There was no mention of development of infrastructure or industry to facilitate this.

In preparation for the policy shift, an internal World Bank report was recently made public by the Bank, which admitted that the Bank's policy for the 1980s and 1990s had willfully neglected agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the Oct. 15 New York Times. During that period, the Bank had pushed for the public sector in African countries to pull back from involvement in agriculture, saying that the market forces would step in, and solve the problems. The Bank pushed governments to cut or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, decontrol prices, and privatize agricultural input supply and marketing institutions. But the private sector did not move in, and food production fell.

Without access to significant credit, roads, and fertilizer markets, the theory that higher prices to farmers for their products, resulting from deregulation, would fuel development, fell flat in those two decades. The new policy focuses only on "small-holders," and not on infrastructure or industry.