This report examines the growing potential of India’s AI-led software as a service (SaaS) start-ups and analyzes the role that the country, which is already a leader in the global software ecosystem, can play in an AI-led future.

As the world starts recovering from the pandemic, accelerating disruptions translate into permanent changes to labour markets. This paper examines proactive investments that yield a triple dividend – boosting economic activity, expanding employment opportunities, and generating multiplier effects in the form of more inclusive economies and societies.

The Young Africa Connects is a Facebook Live series supported by the Master Card Foundation. It aims to inspire, engage, and uplift young people while amplifying the incredible work being done across the continent.

The latest episode of the series discusses issues related to youth resilience in Africa. During the episode three, young African entrepreneurs discuss their journey, sharing their challenges and how they overcame adversity to embrace or create opportunity. These are powerful lessons in resilience and their stories, provide inspiration to other young people.

This report explores the latest AI applications and trends in emerging markets and includes several examples of how AI is expanding opportunities and contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

This report is an evaluation of the actions and approaches taken over the past two decades to assist young entrepreneurs. The learnings embedded in this report demonstrate how their global approach is underpinned by human-centred design principles that are customised to the local context to optimise impact on young entrepreneurs.

This note illustrates how AI can support post-secondary learning across the entire tertiary and vocational education sector in emerging markets.

This report presents a first diagnostic of Africa’s gender gap in financing early-stage ventures in the digital economy (start-ups). The report’s findings indicate that since 2013, only 3 percent of total funding for Africa’s tech start-ups went to all-female founding teams, compared with 76 percent of funding for all-male teams. The report’s analysis shows that female founders are underrepresented in the sectors that attract the most financing; however, even those all-female teams that are working in sectors with high investor interest remain less likely to receive financing than all-male teams, and they receive smaller amounts if they do. Male and female entrepreneurs in the report’s sample also followed different financing paths: female founders were less likely to pitch for equity investments; conversely, they were more likely to apply for bank loans, or to prefer growth from retained earnings.

This publication draws lessons and good practices from entrepreneurship development models and incubation centres designed for the youth in Indonesia. It explores the incubation centres in the country's three public higher education institutions and an entrepreneurship training model facilitated by a Swiss–Indonesian start-up accelerator program. Recommendations focus on strengthening similar programs in other universities, such as management and resources, financial sustainability, mentorship and training, business services and facilities, graduation and post-incubation, and documentation and evaluation.

This report seeks to focus attention on the challenges that Africa’s women entrepreneurs face and identify practical solutions. The report draws on new, high-quality, household and firm-level data to present the clearest evidence to date about the barriers to growth and profitability faced by women entrepreneurs. It goes beyond looking at contextual, endowment and household restrictions in isolation, and, through deep-dive analysis, uncovers new evidence on how social norms, networks and household-level decision making contribute to business performance. It analyzes how they are linked to each other and to women’s strategic business decisions.

The report explores how entrepreneurship support organizations (ESOs) and other stakeholders can help youth move (refugees and other migrants and displaced youth) fulfill their entrepreneurial dreams and ambitions —creating decent work, driving inclusive economic growth, strengthening communities, and transforming prospects and livelihoods.

The blog highlights the World Bank's strategy aims at creating economic opportunities for MENA’s youth by opening-up business environments for young entrepreneurs to compete in free and fair markets for the provision of goods and services.
 

The Rapid Response and Recovery Program was launched by YBI offering COVID-19 focused services in 65 countries to support entrepreneurs across the globe to deal with the unique challenges presented by the pandemic and accompanying lockdowns and social distancing measures. The report highlights what has been implemented to date and pulls together learning and recommendations for best practice in response and recovery in 2021. 

This report seeks to contribute to understanding how youth social entrepreneurship can both support youth development and help accelerate the implementation of the SDGs. To do so, the report synthesizes the current discussion on social entrepreneurship and anchors it in the context of the 2030 Agenda. The report then turns toward the youth situation and examines whether social entrepreneurship can offer employment opportunities and support other elements of youth development, such as youth participation. 

This manual guides business development practitioners, the donor community, and other developmental experts wishing to implement an intervention to support and strengthen women growth-oriented entrepreneurs. It is specifically geared to practitioners wishing to improve their understanding of challenges specific to women entrepreneurs and practical ways of addressing these.

Using data collected from microenterprises in Gaborone, Botswana, this paper finds that women who cross over into male dominated sectors make higher profits and grow larger firms in terms of number of employees compared to women who operate businesses in female-concentrated sectors.

This report presents a desk review of the financing gap, constraints and policies related to the MSME financing in Bangladesh. It aims to provide relevant policy recommendations thereby presenting an opportunity to address these financing challenges.

This is a stocktake summarizing evidence on “what works” in youth employment programs on both the supply and demand side. This paper is based on an extensive desk literature review and analyzes the major meta-analysis and literature reviews on both the labor demand side and labor supply.

This guide aims to provide general guidance to project managers and project teams on the design and implementation of integrated, cross-sectoral youth employment programs. Governments and development institutions too often implement activities and programs that target either the supply side or the demand side of the labor market without coordination or an explicit intent to create linkages that will maximize the impact of their interventions and improve job opportunities for youth.

This guide provides evidence-based operational principles for teams working on women’s entrepreneurship, including resources to build the business case for supporting women-owned businesses and start-ups; to develop a framework for support programs for women-owned businesses, and to share insights from case studies and results.