World Bank Sounds Alarm on 800 Million Job Gap, Calls for Urgent Private Sector Partnership

By TOP AFRICA NEWS Reporter

Brussels, Global Gateway Forum 2025 — Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank Group, delivered a stark message at the Global Gateway Forum 2025 hosted by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, highlighting a looming crisis in job creation across emerging markets. Drawing on current estimates, Banga underscored the need for immediate, comprehensive partnership strategies, particularly involving the private sector, to address a projected deficit of 800 million jobs.

The core of the challenge lies in the sheer volume of young people entering the workforce against current economic forecasts.

“1.2 billion young people in the emerging markets will become ready for a job in the coming 15 years. The same emerging markets are currently forecasted to produce 400 million jobs for them,” Banga stated. While acknowledging that economic forecasts “made by economists like us” could be wrong, he stressed the gravity of the data, emphasizing: “But they will not be wrong by 800 million“. Addressing this shortfall is crucial, as this generation represents “the power of our future,” driving consumption, growth, and prosperity both globally and within their own countries.

Mobilizing Capital and Redefining Jobs

To bridge this immense gap, the World Bank President argued that traditional funding models relying solely on government or multilateral bank money are insufficient. The path forward requires intense collaboration and mobilization of external resources.

“My view is that to create jobs for them, we cannot do it… only with government money, only with multilateral bank money. We have to get the capital, the ingenuity, the innovation, the technology, the urgency of the private sector to come to play at the table,” Banga explained.

The World Bank Group is pursuing a strategy focused on two core areas: establishing the necessary economic environment and focusing on “locally relevant jobs”. Creating a supportive environment involves building infrastructure (physical and human capital), developing skilled and educated populations, and ensuring good governance and rules for businesses to prosper.

Direct Investments in Locally Relevant Sectors

Crucially, the new strategy moves away from job creation models in emerging markets that primarily “look to outsource jobs from the Western world,” a model facing political challenges in developed nations. Instead, the focus is on creating jobs in sectors that are critical and locally relevant to the countries themselves.

Key sectors being prioritized include:

• Infrastructure: Including construction and what infrastructure enables, such as connecting 300 million people in Africa to productive, baseload power.
• Agriculture: Specifically focused on small farmers, with the World Bank planning to inject $9 billion a year into the sector, aiming to mobilize an additional $5 billion of private capital.
• Primary Healthcare: The World Bank is focusing on connecting 1.5 billion people to primary healthcare. This investment directly leads to significant job creation in service delivery.

Banga provided concrete examples of the types of employment these investments will generate: “Think of the jobs for nurses, medical diagnostic technicians, and midwives that we can create“.

The World Bank Group is working in partnership with the European Union, participating in 18 such projects across Africa, Latin America, and Asia, focusing specifically on energy, transport, and digitization.