On May 19, Her Excellency President Dr Samia Suluhu Hassan launched Tanzania’s hosting of the Africa Human Capital Heads of State Summit that will take place on July 25 - 26 in Dar es Salaam. At the launch event, the President along with senior African leaders called on fellow African Heads of State to join together for renewed focus on the urgently needed investments in the continent’s human capital. The event can be watched above.
________________
The Africa Human Capital Heads of State Summit comes in response to engagements with government focal points on the need to draw attention to the role of human capital in economic growth and elevate the discussion on the importance of investing in people. The Summit will foster technical deliberation, share the latest knowledge on human capital, and conclude with concrete commitments and next steps from the participating Heads of State.
The overall theme of the Summit is linking investments in human capital to economic growth and harnessing the demographic dividend, by addressing learning poverty and the skills gap for youth and women. Learning poverty is the share of children unable to read and understand a simple text by the age of 10, estimated to be 89% in Africa.
The two-day summit will bring a bottom-up demand to human capital prioritization and investments (via technical workshops in all Sub-Saharan countries) by discussing challenges and bottlenecks to human capital accumulation along with identification of priorities and drivers of growth. These workshops will be led by country Human Capital Focal Points. The outcomes of country-level workshops will be used to inform high-level Heads of State summit interventions.