In the first post of this blog series, we traveled to the center of Côte d’Ivoire during rice harvesting season and met two people whose livelihoods depended on the outcome: Sali Soro, a smallholder farmer and member of a regional rice cooperative, and Zié Coulibaly, director of the Katiola rice mill. Their stories illustrate the challenges faced…
A month ago, Brookings Metro published a report warning that just as the gains from economic growth were distributed unevenly over the last few decades, the losses from automation will also hurt some groups and places more than others. In the U.S., robots will take jobs from men, the young, and minorities. The losses will…
In the changing nature of work, diplomas are important, but skills are invaluable. Being a teacher in Norway may require a very different set of skills than being a teacher in Africa, even though the job title is the same. For example, while teachers in the developed world may need to have digital or foreign…
It is rice harvesting time in the Hambol Region of central Côte d’Ivoire, and Sali Soro is making sure this important day goes off without a hitch. A female member of Coop-CA Hambol, a regional rice cooperative in the Lopé lowlands, Sali managed to rent one of the few threshers available in the area. Workers…
We spoke with David Robalino, former Manager of the Jobs Group of the Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice. He discusses his report “Lending for Jobs Operations” that describes a general framework to inform the design of a new generation of World Bank lending operations. These operations have explicit objectives to either create jobs, improve…
A few years ago, Gergana Ivanova became famous in my country, Bulgaria. She became the first woman to serve in the national guards’ unit and the first guardswoman to stand in front of the presidency – not only a great honor but also a dream she has had since she was in first grade. She…
Targeted household-level economic inclusion programs are on the rise: nearly 100 programs across 43 countries have reached an estimated 14 million people to date, according to the Partnership for Economic Inclusion’s (PEI) 2018 State of the Sector report. These programs provide a “big push” to help the extreme poor and other vulnerable people move into…
Social enterprises have plenty of potential to make concrete impacts on youth employment outcomes. For those not familiar with this model, social enterprises are businesses that conduct commercial, profit-generating activities but focus more on social outcomes than profits. This innovative approach in development has caught the attention of many in the youth employment space, especially…
Many people in Sub-Saharan Africa still work in agriculture; on average, over half of the labor force, and even more in poorer countries and localities. Yet the share of the labor force in agriculture is declining (as is normal in development), leading African leaders and economists to focus on job creation outside agriculture. Planning for…
Let’s face it: assessing the results of a development project can be as complex as designing and implementing it. This is particularly true for projects that aim to create more and better jobs for all population groups and often work across sectors: how do we measure the number of newly created jobs through a private…