The World Bank has unveiled a new plan to help African countries strengthen their human capital, investments and Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (SMEs).
The Bank’s Vice President for Africa, Hafez Ghanem, made the disclosure at the launch of the Bank’s Plan during the World Bank-IMF Spring Meetings, held in Washington D.C., US, recently.
He stated that the objective of the plan is to enable Africa’s young people get equipped with the right skills to compete in the global digital economy.
“Preventing a child from fulfilling his or her potential is not only fundamentally unjust, but it also limits the growth potential of economies whose future workers are held back. GDP per worker in Sub-Saharan Africa could be 2.5 times higher if everyone were healthy and enjoyed a good education from pre-school to secondary school,” he said.
The World Bank will increase its investments in human capital in Africa by 50% in the next funding cycle. “This includes new World Bank grants and concessional finance for human capital projects in Africa, totaling $15 billion in fiscal years 2021-2023.
“The World Bank will invest these funds strategically to unblock structural constraints to human capital development. The World Bank will also target game changing interventions that leverage technology and innovation and that prevent and reverse damage to human capital in fragile and conflict-affected settings.
“The World Bank is already supporting countries to come up with new strategies to invest more and better in their people,” said Ghanem.
Meanwhile, 23 African countries, covering over 60% of the region’s population, have joined a coalition of nearly 60 countries to join the Human Capital Project, committing to a set of accelerated investments in their human capital.
Speaking also, the World Bank Vice President for Human Development, Annette Dixon, said that, “Human Capital Project countries are breaking away from traditional paradigms to make investment in their people a priority and are working in a more coordinated way across government to ensure that households have the right enabling environment to support human capital formation.”
In an effort to help countries turn these indicators around, the World Bank’s Africa Human Capital Plan is setting ambitious targets to be achieved in the region by 2023. These achievements can raise Africa’s Human Capital Index score upwards to increase the productivity of future workers by 13 percent.