The Asante Africa Foundation's 2023 Impact Report, "Rural Youth Breaking Barriers," highlights the transformative power of education in East Africa. By providing quality education and fostering entrepreneurship and leadership, AAF's programs empowered over 24,000 youth in 2023, creating lasting change and brighter futures. They acknowledge the need for continued support in education, mentorship, and youth empowerment to build a stronger Africa.

This Note analyzes how Generative AI (GAI) will impact jobs, using a skills-based approach to categorize occupations as augmented by GAI, disrupted by automation, or minimally affected. While GAI is expected to enhance some jobs, a troubling gender gap emerges: women are more likely to hold jobs susceptible to disruption, while men are more likely to benefit from GAI-powered augmentation. This trend suggests GAI could widen the gender gap in the job market.

The Report explores the challenges of youth unemployment for people with disabilities in South Africa. The high rate of youth unemployment is highlighted, despite employers reporting unfilled vacancies. The social model of disability is used to frame the analysis, arguing societal barriers are the main obstacle. These barriers include inaccessible workplaces and a lack of accessible education, significantly disadvantaging young people with disabilities. The report acknowledges employer challenges in finding qualified candidates. Legislative efforts to promote disability inclusion are also outlined.

In this paper, Youth Business International (YBI) and Somo, YBI’s member organisation in Kenya, shine a light on the important role of informal businesses in sub-Saharan Africa and the barriers they face that prevent them from scaling up, with a particular focus on women-led informal businesses in Kenya. It includes recommendations for governments, financial institutions, and development agencies on ways to increase access to finance for informal businesses.

This Short Note is part of a series building on the report Working Without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work. This note aims to provide some practical tips for practitioners like World Bank task team leaders in implementing online gig work programs to enable vulnerable populations - such as youth, women, persons with disabilities - to access online gig jobs to support their social and economic inclusion. Governments can use the potential of online gig work to build human capital, develop the nation’s digital skills, and provide opportunities to supplement household income.

This Short Note is part of a series building on the report Working Without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work. This short note is based on a survey conducted in one of the largest microwork platforms and supplemented by data scraping from the same platform. Using descriptive statistics, network analysis, constrained linear optimization, linear regressions, and case studies, the note attempts to shed light on the world of microwork, which presents a low entry barrier opportunity for low-skilled people to supplement their incomes and participate in the digital economy. Microworkers are more likely to be young, male, possessing a range of skills, and residing outside capital cities.

This Short Note is part of a series building on the report Working without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work. flexibility of working hours and location associated with online gig work uniquely positions it as an avenue to boost female labor force participation, especially in regions with limited local job opportunities. This short note takes a deep dive into gender-based disparities in access to these new forms of work, especially asking whether there is a gender gap in hourly rates that online gig workers ask for and earn from online tasks. The analysis uses data from over 19,000 profiles on one of the largest English-language freelancing platforms. Data from one of the largest global freelancing platforms shows that women quote approximately 10 percent lower hourly rates than men, likely reflecting a difference in confidence.

This S4YE Note analyzes the importance of the fashion industry for socio-economic growth and examines its potential as a source of job opportunities for young people. It discusses jobs along the industry’s value chain, its contribution to global revenues and trade, and its evolution with changes in technology, environmental concerns, and changing consumption patterns. The note also highlights the skills required for jobs in the fashion industry and presents analysis to support the claim that the industry is a key driver of jobs for youth and women. The note concludes with policy recommendations to promote circular economy job creation, skill development of young talent, and investment in micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the fashion industry.

The report reveals a complex global employment scenario. It forecasts a slight increase in global unemployment in 2024, signalling emerging labour market challenges. The report highlights disparities between high and low-income countries, noting higher unemployment and poverty rates in lower-income nations. It also points out that a significant portion of the global workforce remains in informal employment.

This document outlines how Duolingo is utilizing AI to support education for refugees.

This paper assesses the reliability and validity of cognitive and socioemotional skills measures and investigates the correlation between schooling, skills acquisition, and labor earnings. The primary data from Pakistan incorporates two innovations related to measurement and sampling. On measurement, the paper develops and implements a battery of instruments intended to capture cognitive and socioemotional skills among young adults. On sampling, the paper uses a panel that follows respondents from their original rural locations in 2003 to their residences in 2018, a period over which 38 percent of the respondents left their native villages. In terms of their validity and reliability, our skills measures compare favorably to previous measurement attempts in low- and middle-income countries. The following are documented in the data: (a) more years of schooling are correlated with higher cognitive and socioemotional skills; (b) labor earnings are correlated with cognitive and socioemotional skills as well as years of schooling; and (c) the earnings-skills correlations depend on respondents’ migration status. The magnitudes of the correlations between schooling and skills on the one hand and earnings and skills on the other are consistent with a widespread concern that such skills are underproduced in the schooling system.

This policy review considers the opportunities e-commerce offers to women-led and womenowned small enterprises in developing and least developed countries (LDCs), and the challenges such enterprises face to engage in e-commerce. While a vast literature is available on e-commerce and UNCTAD has contributed to it, looking at e-commerce through a gender lens is a more recent endeavour. This publication aims to contribute to it. It is addressed to a variety of stakeholders, but especially to policymakers, with the aim of providing guidance on how to design policies and measures that enhance women’s beneficial participation in the economy by leveraging e-commerce. Nevertheless, private sector stakeholders are encouraged to examine the findings of this policy review to determine opportunities for collaboration with government, including through public-private partnerships.

The ILO and Learning Lions are bridging the digital divide in remote areas by providing comprehensive digital skills training, mentorship and job opportunities to young people. This innovative program is transforming the lives of vulnerable communities, including refugees, and paving the way for an inclusive digital economy in Kenya.

This short report summarizes a Creative Economy Alliance (CEA) webinar hosted by the Cultural and Creative Industries global project (implemented by GIZ and the Goethe-Institut on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development) and the World Bank’s Solutions for Youth Employment (S4YE) Project. The webinar focused on using international cooperation to drive gender equality within the creative economy.

This report highlights the Better Work strategy (2018-2022), a collaborative effort by the ILO and IFC to promote gender equality in the global garment industry. It highlights the importance of decent work conditions, including fair treatment, social protections, and work-life balance, for empowering women and fostering a thriving garment industry.

To better address gender inequalities and promote an inclusive environment, the supra-regional project, Cultural and Creative Industries, commissioned a gender analysis. It highlights gender-based differences in terms of the relative distribution of resources, opportunities, constraints and power in the Creative and Cultural Industries.

This report details the first Australian exploratory study with students and young people to understand their perceptions and use of Generative AI. The study includes insight from 576 young people aged 14 to 26 across High Schools, Universities, TAFE, Colleges, and in work.

The Jigeen Ñi Academie Musique (JAM) is a ground-breaking project in Senegal dedicated to the professional development of women. Along with practical music skills, the academy provides training in leadership and cultural entrepreneurship to enhance income and employment opportunities for women in the music industry.

This report showcases a successful pilot program in Ethiopia's Somali region that connected female entrepreneurs with a digital mentoring platform offering valuable resources. The program's key to success was a multi-faceted approach:traditional marketing to raise awareness, in-person support for initial platform navigation, a mobile-friendly low-bandwidth design for easy access, simplified registration to minimize barriers, and clear educational materials to empower women to leverage the platform's full potential. This demonstrates the feasibility of connecting female entrepreneurs in low-income areas with digital resources and highlights the importance of a user-centric approach for successful implementation.

This publication explores the African fashion industry and an initiative by the African Development Bank to support it. The fashion industry is a major player in Africa, holding immense potential for job creation, particularly for women and young people. However, the industry also faces challenges such as limited access to funding and low production capacity. The African Development Bank's Fashionomics Africa program helps fashion businesses with training, investment, and finding new markets. This publication also mentions two examples of successful African fashion businesses that benefited from the program.