Ms. Badiee said that the Bank and international donors are expanding programs of training, targeted grants, and other assistance, to help developing countries to strengthen their ability to gather, analyze, and disseminate high-quality data. Simply put, good policies are built on good statistics. The population surge in the past half-century has caused the world's population to increase from 2.5 thousand million people in 1950 to 6.1 thousand million in 2000. The world's population is expected to grow at 1.1 percent a year this decade, adding 70 million people annually. The 30 percent of the world's land covered by forest is equal to about 6,000 square meters per person.
Mechanization of agriculture is much more advanced in rich countries than in poor countries.
In rich countries there are 927 tractors for every 1,000 agricultural workers. In poor countries there are just five tractors for every 1,000 agricultural workers. On average a high-income country has 40 times as many computers per capita as a country in Sub Saharan Africa. But there has been significant progress. In 1995 only five countries in Sub Saharan Africa had Internet connections.