Workforce Development

Skills for the future initiative (SFI) aims to prepare the youth of Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to compete in the global economy by equipping them with skills necessary for the future of work, including essential cloud computing skills and 21st century skills. In the changing future of work, skills that can be substituted by technology are fading in demand but skills that complement technology are becoming highly valued.

In the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region, only one in two working-age adults has a job, and the region is experiencing more and more limited job creation to absorb the working-age population. In some countries, only three out of ten women are working or looking for jobs, and across all countries, they have a harder time finding a job and spend more time looking for one.

The vocational education and training (VET) school study's purpose was to describe the current status of secondary VET schools in the Prešov region, identify areas preventing schools from achieving a higher quality of education, and pinpoint areas for school improvement. The main objective is to conduct an assessment of employers and secondary VET schools and work with the Prešov region education department to more effectively pursue European Union (EU) structural funds to implement needed changes in line with study findings.

Gross domestic product (GDP) growth in Nepal is estimated at 7.1 percent in FY2019, driven mainly by the service and agriculture sectors. The service sector is likely to grow by 7.5 percent due to a boost in the retail, hotel, and restaurant subsectors, driven by an uptick in tourist arrivals and remittance-fueled private consumption. Agriculture is estimated to grow by 5 percent in FY2019, well above its 30-year average of 3.1 percent, due to good monsoons, increased commercialization, availability of fertilizers and seeds, and improved irrigation facilities.

Sub-Saharan Africa has the youngest population of any region of the world, and that growing working-age population represents a major opportunity to reduce poverty and increase shared prosperity. But the region’s workforce is the least skilled in the world, constraining economic prospects. Despite economic growth, declining poverty, and investments in skills-building, too many students in too many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa are not acquiring the foundational skills they need to thrive and prosper in an increasingly competitive global economy.

Adolescent girls and young women are a critical group for India and the state of Jharkhand; a group with unmet aspirations and tremendous potential to contribute to the growth and development of the state. Their stark vulnerabilities point to an urgent need for comprehensive empowering interventions, focused on education and employment.

In South Sudan, the importance of focusing on young people is clear. They represent the majority of the population, with the average South Sudanese being 17 years old and the average 3rd grader reported as being already 14 years old. Furthermore, South Sudanese youth have low educational attainment, inconsistent economic participation and are also affected by the widespread violence that has existed for a number of years in different regions of the country.

Extra-curricular activities (ECA) are instrumental in the acquisition of twenty-first-century skills, which include both intra-and inter-personal skills. Now that basic skills of reading and writing in early grades are taken for granted in many parts of the world, twenty-first-century skills are becoming more important. With robots and artificial intelligence taking on ever greater presence in society, education has to go much beyond the provision of knowledge and basic skills.

The objective of the report which is in two phases, is to explore the overarching factors in theCentral African Republic (CAR) that contribute to the out-of-school youth phenomenon with a view toproviding recommendations for improving existing policies and programs.

Investing in human capital is essential if Tanzania is to develop economically. Reduce poverty and achieve the aspirations articulated in Development Vision 2025. This economic update discusses where Tanzania stands in terms of its investments in human capital. The analysis is part of the World Bank Human Capital Project (HCP). It relies on both the Human Capital Index (HCI) and data on human capital wealth (HCW). One HCP aim is to measure how much social sectors, among them health and nutrition, education, social protection, and labor, contribute to worker productivity.