Digital Africa, Technological Transformation for Jobs examines pathways to produce and promote the expanded use of affordable and attractive digital technologies (DTs) that are appropriate for Sub-Saharan Africa’s growing workforce and facilitate continued learning through use. DTs are defined broadly to include digital and data infrastructure, broadband internet, smartphones, tablets, and computers. They also include more specialized productivity-enhancing solutions, such as management upgrading, worker training, procurement, marketing, logistics, financing, and insurance.

The Goethe-Institut Jordan established the takween Circular Design training programme to provide an opportunity for aspiring designers, creatives, and entrepreneurs from diverse fields, such as architecture, fashion, as well as product and packaging design, to develop sustainable product ideas that promote a cleaner planet.

This report estimates the size of the South African care economy through an analysis of the number of existing and potential future job opportunities in the sector. It also outlines the potential impact of investment into the care economy including economic impact, impact on beneficiaries, and impact on the young people who could access the job opportunities together with the broader societal impacts.

The present book comes at a pivotal moment in the fight against the climate, biodiversity and pollution crises. These crises – without any exaggeration – threaten our very survival as humanity. Tipping points are getting dangerously near, and the window for decisive action is closing fast. The circular economy is the model of the future, for Europe and the world. This is why it is one of the pillars of the European Green Deal. Making our economies circular could cut EU industrial emissions by 56% annually by 2050. It would bring balance back to our relationship with nature and reduce our vulnerability to disruptions in global, complex supply chains. The shift to a circular economy needs to happen at a global scale as well. This is why we launched the Global Circular Economy and Resource Efficiency Alliance together with UNEP, why we push for ambitious global agreements across the board, and why we work with businesses from all over the world.

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.

This report warns that climate change is already causing widespread losses and damages worldwide. The report focuses on the interactions among the coupled systems climate, ecosystems, and human society.

This report ilustrates the current state of accounting and reporting solutions, and how they can support businesses in driving the circular transition. The report concludes that the shift to a circular economy requires complex changes to our present ways of doing business. To push forward the circular transition—and to be able to unlock business opportunities in the new circular economy— the current approach to value, impact, and risk must be redefined.

South Africa’s paid care economy contributes 13.8% towards total employment in the labour market and is largely undertaken by women – estimated at 84% in Graph 1 below.

Historically, the care economy has been a neglected sector, however, recent attention has been brought to it by South Africa’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa. This presents an opportunity to create momentum around expanding solutions for the care economy.

This report is structured to dive into each of the care economy sectors, starting with early childhood development, and then education, healthcare and domestic work. Each section will provide an overview of the sector, specify key operators, outline challenges and bottlenecks, and identify opportunities for targeted investment.

This document is an overview of the lessons learned from an IFAD project on scaling up rural youth access to inclusive financial services for entrepreneurship and employment implemented in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. It contributes to shaping regional policy dialogues and strategies for supporting youth integration in the rural development space and will inform the design of future youth projects in IFAD.

This report outlines the case for thinking beyond borders to achieve a sustainable, circular economy that matches environmental goals with social ambitions. It highlights key levers for governments and multilateral bodies, illustrating the benefits of a global, socially just approach to environmental, trade and development policies, and the risks of continuing along current policy pathways.

As Europe goes through its green and digital transformations, high-quality vocational education and training (VET) is key to ensuring people have the right skills for the jobs of today and tomorrow. The Council Recommendation on VET for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience, adopted in November 2020, sets out the EU’s comprehensive vision and strategic objectives for the future of VET. This brochure outlines this vision and the importance of VET reforms at national level, including key principles and actions to support these reforms.

This research reveals that 77 percent of young people in Asia Pacific aspire to get a green job within the next 10 years. For companies operating in Asia Pacific, this presents a huge opportunity to move rapidly toward their environmentally sustainable business outcomes. The challenge, however, is they need to start acting now to design the jobs that will attract motivated young people of a variety of skill levels.

This paper focuses on key sectors across 21 emerging markets that can be prioritized in post-COVID green recovery efforts. These sectors are grouped around greening existing and future energy infrastructure, building climate-smart cities, and helping speed the transition of key industries to green production practices. Concerted actions by public and private players across these areas can deliver economic recovery in the short and medium term and can deliver long-term sustainable and low-carbon growth.

A rapidly urbanizing world presents enormous economic opportunities for the poor and vulnerable but also significant barriers to economic inclusion. This report provides an overview of the urban context and challenges, describes a framework for fostering urban economic inclusion, and examines the current landscape of economic inclusion programs, starting with the policy impetus driving their emergence.

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.

Buildher aims to equip women in Kenya with accredited construction skills, which are expected to allow beneficiaries to have greater financial independence and prosperity, to change male attitudes and to promote gender equality within the construction industry.

This paper assesses the link between human capital, emission and technological change, using OECD data on employed individuals’ cognitive skills as well as industrial emissions. The findings demonstrate that higher levels of cognitive skills are associated with employment in industries that rely less on emissions. In addition, those industries have been able over time to reduce their reliance on emissions for production. The study provides evidence that across OECD countries less emission-intensive industries require more highly skilled workers – thus investments in education are critical to better enable the uptake of green technologies.

This report identifies the circular economy baseline, market gaps and opportunities existing in Africa. The research findings highlight five opportunity areas to transition Africa to a circular economy development model based on a set of criteria including circularity potential, economic significance, transformative impact potential and momentum. The thematic areas identified as a result are food systems, packaging, built environment, fashion and textile, and electronics.

The Global Youth Energy Outlook (GYEO) is the first youth-led research project of its kind organized by Student Energy to engage over 40,000 young people ages 18 to 30 and share their perspectives on the energy transition. The research highlights that most young people want their countries to take immediate and drastic climate action. At the same time, public and private sector leaders are called upon to actively create opportunities for young people and meaningfully engage youth in decision-making spaces. Additionally, the report highlights regional differences between young people from developing and emerging economies and those from high-income countries.