The World Bank has launched a new plan to help African countries strengthen their human capital. The objective of the plan is to enable Africa’s young people grow up with optimal health and equipped with the right skills to compete in the digitising global economy.
In an effort to help countries turn these indicators around, the World Bank’s Africa Human Capital Plan has set ambitious targets to be achieved in the region by 2023. These include a drastic reduction in child mortality to save four million lives, averting stunting among 11 million children, and increasing learning outcomes for girls and boys in school by 20per cent.
The Plan also aims at empowering women to prevent early marriage and pregnancy for adolescent girls. “The adolescent fertility rate in sub-Saharan Africa is 102 births per 1,000 girls-three times as high as in South Asia. This not only damaging for girls and their children, but it also hurts economic growth,” noted Ghanem.