(Adds meeting with private sector) By Lesley Wroughton NOUAKCHOTT, Jan 28 (Reuters) - World Bank President Robert Zoellick expressed support on Monday for Mauritania's fledgling democracy and signed an accord pledging assistance for energy, mineral and port development in the Islamic Saharan state. After talks with government and parliamentarians during a two-day visit, Zoellick said the multilateral lender would also look at ways to improve Mauritanian farming and education and help fund, or find private investors, for development projects. "The World Bank's primary message is that we're here to listen and to learn how we can be of greater help," Zoellick said after meeting President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi. Mauritania's needs are enormous and Abdallahi's young government is under pressure to deliver economic and social benefits to its 3 million people and tackle corruption. Abdallahi won multi-party elections in Mauritania last year which were hailed by international observers as a democratic model for Africa. They crowned a handover to civilian rule by a military junta which took power in a bloodless coup in 2005. In December at a conference in Paris, Mauritania won over $2 billion in donor support, mostly from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Once mostly nomads, droughts between 1969 and 1974 prompted a flood of Mauritanians into the capital Nouakchott. That led to a sharp decline in farming and herding, and increased pressure on education, housing, employment, health and other services. Zoellick's visit to Mauritania, which straddles black and Arab Africa, was the first stop in a four-nation tour of the continent that will also take him to Liberia, Ethiopia -- where he will attend the African Union summit -- and Mozambique. OIL DEVELOPMENT Zoellick signed a memorandum of understanding with the Mauritanian government on the development of the country's mineral resources and still-growing oil sector, the expansion of Nouakchott port and exploitation of natural gas for electricity. China has agreed to build a mineral quay at the port and Zoellick said the World Bank would look to finance or develop public-private partnerships to develop a container quay that for more than two decades has operated without a single crane. The government asked the Bank to help develop its private sector, long dominated by a small elite, to boost the economy. In roundtable talks with the private sector Zoellick welcomed steps by the government to improve the business climate but added there was scope for doing more. He said the private sector was hampered by the lack of proper business regulations and poor access to financing. He said much-needed jobs would come from small and medium-sized enterprises, saying his experience had shown that mineral resource projects did not always generate many jobs. He said the government should act quickly to address the needs of tens of thousands of people in Nouakchott's slums. He said Mauritania was considered a lower middle-income country, or so-called emerging economy, and so would eventually no longer qualify for the Bank's low-interest loans or grants. But he said the Bank would find ways to finance development and infrastructure projects, including with the help of the Bank's private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corp, and political guarantee agency MIGA. (Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Elizabeth Piper)
A man walks past flood victim at a camp for the internally displaced in Chikwawa district, Malawi January 27, 2008 where six people have so far been killed and over four ...
