Development

The World Bank Group’s Human Capital Project is a global effort designed to accelerate the accumulation of human capital by encouraging more effective policies and investments. Human Capital is defined as the sum of a population’s health, skills, knowledge, and experience, which accounts for the largest share of countries’ wealth globally.

Human Capital Development allows everyone to reach their full potential and is increasingly becoming recognized as a primary driver of a nation’s economic growth. The World Bank places special emphasis on working with countries across Sub-Saharan Africa to help them meet their human capital goals. Investing in Africa’s people is central to ensuring the continent’s future prosperity and its full participation in global markets.

The AfDB Creating Decent Jobs: Strategies, Policies, and Instruments report illustrates the best practices in developing youth entrepreneurship and self-employment, which we view as critical Human Capital Development opportunities.

The study’s key drivers to drivers to robust economic growth include:

• Effective training in entrepreneurship which combines core business administration skills such as accounting with softer entrepreneurial skills such as problem-solving
• Programs should clearly separate training and financing functions
• Self-employment should be treated as a different group than entrepreneurs, especially in low-income countries
• Better access to credit

The report also stresses the need to provide entrepreneurship and self-employment opportunities for the disadvantaged and underserved. The study’s findings determined that the majority of the entrepreneurship and self-employment programs do not exhibit statistically significant effects.

This Project Proposal illustrates proven methods to support the development of entrepreneurial and self-employment skills which are desperately needed to address the challenges and opportunities presented by Sub-Saharan Africa.