This book looks at the experience of skills development in five African countries, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and Tanzania, that together account for one-third of the nearly 900 million people living in Sub-Saharan Africa. The study examines: (a) the employment characteristics of the...

The Results-Based Initiatives (RBI), launched in 2007, were a pioneering attempt to provide comprehensive, coherent, and rigorous evidence on effective interventions to foster the economic empowerment of women. The RBI comprised five small pilots with built-in impact evaluation designed to...

This report aims to provide a comprehensive package of timely and relevant input to the Government’s initiatives. In doing so, it brings together into one coherent framework and story-line both new analysis and previous work undertaken for the World Bank’s policy dialogue – in particular...

This Note is a stocktake summarizing evidence on “what works” in youth employment programs on both the supply and demand side. Employment outcomes refer both to direct and indirect job creation, including through firm start-up, as well as improvements in the quality of jobs as manifested in...

Do inward-focused development strategies reduce competition in factor markets and incentives for more efficient skills development? Do outward-focused development strategies improve them? The authors compared vocational education and training systems in six developing countries in the 1980s....

The movement from centrally planned to market economies will not eliminate the need for manpower planning. Rather, it will substantially change the roles manpower planners play and the techniques they use. Manpower planners must become analysts of the labor market. In a market economy, the will...

Measures assuring job security are sought by workers and their representatives to protect themselves against economic fluctuations and the loss of jobs and incomes. In sectors of an economy that require a skilled workforce employers are often willing to provide promises of job security in...

This study focuses on short- and medium-term solutions. It informs the government about the type of programs and policies that could improve the employability of young people, paying special attention to areas in which productivity can be rapidly improved. The report consists of six chapters....