“The World Bank and the European Union are pledging $8.25 billion to boost economic growth and fight poverty in Africa’s Sahel region,” according to an announcement made on Monday during a trip to the region by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, the Associated Press/Washington Post reports. “The E.U. is donating $6.75 billion over seven years,” while “[t]he World Bank is contributing $1.5 billion over two years,” the news service adds (11/4). “Ban, Kim and top officials from the African Union, African Development Bank and European Union [were] in Mali on Monday and [will] travel to Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad” in an effort “to highlight the battle against poverty [in some of] Africa’s worst-off nations,” Agence France-Presse writes, noting, “Eleven million of the 80 million people living in Sahel countries lack sufficient food, the region has had three severe droughts in a decade and Ban says it is ‘awash with weapons'” (11/1).