The 1997 conference of the Mediterranean Development Forum : an evaluation of a pilot initiative

This report presents the results of an evaluation of a major regional conference sponsored by the World Bank and a number of partner institutions in the Middle East and North Africa (the MENA region), held in Marrakech, in May 1997. With over 650 participants, the conference was a pilot initiative in a number of important ways: it was the first large, region wide conference that the Economic Development Institute (EDI) of the Bank organized that included a large number of workshops and other events on a broad range of specialized topics. As such, the conference serves both as a trial and in many ways as a model for subsequent regional conferences. The topics of the twelve workshops included: financial market development; capital flows; water management; education reform; management and financing of small enterprises; economic management training; economic journalism; telecommunications; Euro-Med integration; fiscal decentralization; global integration and trade; and investment and trade promotion.