Occasion: University of Ghana
Audience: Students, Faculty, Policymakers, Private Sector, Civil Society
Opening
Vice Chancellor, distinguished faculty, students and graduates of the University of Ghana, colleagues, and friends — it is a great honor to be with you today.
I join you in my capacity as Chief Knowledge Officer of the World Bank Group — a role I took up recently after more than two decades in public service as Ireland's Minister for Finance and President of the Eurogroup. Across those years, in cabinet rooms, finance ministries, one question is always asked, across cabinet rooms, finance ministries, and now development institutions: how do we ensure that education translates into opportunity — and that young people can find their footing in an economy that keeps changing beneath their feet?
That question is urgent everywhere. But standing here today, in one of Africa's most respected universities, speaking with some of the continent's most educated young people, it carries a particular weight — and a particular promise.
Today, I want to speak not only about Ghana, but about the world you are entering. About Africa's moment. About a global transformation in the nature of work that is reshaping every economy on every continent. And about what the World Bank Group believes must be done — and is doing — to make sure that your education leads to the best possible future for you and Ghana.
The Global Skills Crisis
Let me start with the global picture. Because what you are navigating here is not a local challenge. It is global in scale. Across low- and middle-income countries today, seven in ten 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries cannot read a simple, age-appropriate text. More than three billion adults have less than a lower secondary education. And in the next decade alone, 1.2 billion young people will enter labor markets in developing countries — most of them without the skills that employers say they need.
These are not just numbers. They are lives, a gap between the systems that have been built to educate people, and the needs of fast-evolving economies. And the mismatch is getting wider, not narrower. Artificial intelligence, automation, and the green transition are reshaping entire occupational categories in real time. Jobs that exist today will look fundamentally different in ten years. Skills that were sufficient a decade ago are no longer enough.
This is the defining challenge of our time — and it is one the World Bank Group has placed at the very center of its mission.
Africa's Moment — Promise and Pressure
Let me now turn to Africa.
Africa is not a bystander in this global story. It is its most consequential chapter.
The African continent has the world's youngest and fastest-growing population.
By 2050, more than half of global population growth will take place in Africa. This is extraordinary demographic momentum. It is a potential dividend of historic proportions.
Here is the challenge: Africa currently creates approximately 3 million formal jobs per year, while 10-12 million young people enter the labor force annually. Even under optimistic projections, wage employment in the formal sector will not absorb many young Africans in the near future. Most will create their own livelihoods — in agriculture, in small enterprises, in the informal economy. The challenge is not simply to get people into jobs. It is to raise productivity and earnings across all forms of work, so that the millions of young Africans who are working are getting ahead.
The challenge is to ensure that graduates are equipped with the skills they need for jobs. This is real. It is a continent-wide challenge.
The Graduate Insertion Challenge — Speaking Directly to You
So, to the students and graduates here today:
You are not the generation that faces a lack of education.
By historical measure, you are among the most educated cohort of Africans ever.
But the labor market you are entering is more demanding, more competitive, and more rapidly changing than any your predecessors faced.
There are several dimensions to this challenge.
First, there is a skills mismatch —often because curricula evolve more slowly than economies, and universities have not always been designed with employers in the room.
Second, there is an experience gap — being asked for experience before you have had the chance to gain it.
Third, there is sometimes an aspirational mismatch. Many graduates are looking for formal employment in sectors where formal job creation is slow, while high-growth opportunities exist in sectors — agribusiness, the digital economy, green energy — that may not have been on the radar during your studies.
And there is a fourth dimension that matters enormously: the quality of foundational thinking skills. Structured reasoning, analytical writing, quantitative literacy, the ability to learn and adapt — are what make all other skills learnable. When those foundations are strong, a changing economy is navigable. When they are weak, even a degree offers limited protection.
I raise these issues not to discourage you.
I raise them because they are solvable—and because you are part of the solution.
What the World Bank Is Doing
The World Bank Group has placed education, skills and jobs at the heart of our development agenda.
Our new Education and Skills Strategy is built around a simple conviction:
Every individual deserves the education, skills, and opportunities needed to access meaningful employment and realize their full potential.
The strategy is organized around four interconnected priorities, which together form a pathway from early childhood to productive employment.
The first is strengthening early learning — building the foundational literacy and numeracy that are the prerequisites for everything that follows. As WBG President Ajay Banga has said: "Without literacy and numeracy, nothing else is possible — not skills, not jobs, not growth."
The second is keeping children in school and ensuring that they learn — through better support to teachers in the classroom and strong systems to hold schools accountable for what they deliver. We currently support over 325 million students through active programs globally, but the needs are greater still.
The third priority is the one most relevant to you: equipping youth with job-relevant skills. This means redesigning higher education and technical training to align with what labor markets demand — through industry partnerships in the sectors and industries that create jobs, with hands-on experience embedded in degree programs, and with reskilling for adults as labor market needs and careers evolve. The private sector is not a passive recipient of graduates; it must be a co-designer of the talent pipeline.
And the fourth priority is putting skills to work: improving access to job placement services and encouraging entrepreneurship. This includes investing in smarter labor market information systems so that graduates and employers can find each other — and so that training systems can track whether their graduates are getting hired.
Across all four priorities, the World Bank Group is combining public financing with private sector investment, with a deliberate focus on knowledge and bringing lessons from every country into the countries where we work.
What International Experience Teaches Us
One of the clearest findings from across the world is that skills investments work best when industry leads — not when government designs a curriculum and hopes employers will recognize it, but when employers are at the table from the start, co-designing, co-financing, and co-delivering training tied to real jobs in real value chains. We are putting this principle at the center of our strategy, drawing from knowledge and experience of leading countries.
For example, South Korea aligned its technical schools with priority industries — semiconductors, advanced manufacturing — with employers shaping curricula and certification. Vietnam sustained investments in teacher quality and structured pedagogy that drove world-class learning gains, making its workforce attractive to advanced manufacturers. Singapore and Ireland aligned lifelong learning systems with sector roadmaps, attracting pharmaceuticals, ICT, and financial services investment.
In Africa, we are seeing encouraging models emerge. In the DRC, skills development is being embedded directly into a hydropower investment program. In East Africa, real-time analysis of job vacancy data helps education systems understand what digital skills employers are demanding, by occupation and sector.
The lesson that cuts across all of these cases is this: proximity to the market matters. Training that happens in isolation from employers produces graduates who are ready for a job description, not a job.
What This Means for You
Let me conclude with some practical reflections.
First, a degree is your starting point, not your destination. The skills that will determine your trajectory — critical thinking, communication, data literacy, adaptability, the ability to learn what you do not yet know — are built continuously, not conferred at graduation.
Second, the most valuable professionals in the emerging economy are those who can bridge worlds — who bring technical knowledge to problems that others approach only with intuition, or who bring human judgment to domains that others are handing to algorithms. Your combination of disciplines, languages, and contexts is a competitive asset.
Third, do not wait for the perfect formal job to appear. Africa's most dynamic opportunities are often in sectors and roles that do not yet have established hiring pipelines. Agribusiness, climate adaptation, digital services, the creative economy — these are generating real demand for people who are analytically capable and practically skilled. Be willing to build your path rather than follow one.
Fourth, engage with your university as a partner in this. Institutions like this one have a critical role to play — co-designing curricula with industry, expanding internships, tracking graduate outcomes, and preparing researchers and innovators who drive transformation. Hold your institution to that standard and contribute to it.
And to the policymakers and university leaders in this room: the architecture of opportunity is yours to build. The data is clear on what works — industry-linked training, strong foundational skills, functional labor market information, and private sector at the table. The question is not what to do. It is whether we have the sustained political will and institutional capacity to do it at scale.
Closing
Let me close with a reflection.
The challenges we face—skills gaps, rapid technological change, and the pressure of demographic growth—are real.
But so too is the opportunity.
Everywhere I traveled, I encounter extraordinary energy, creativity, and ambition.
Africa is not waiting.
Its entrepreneurs are not waiting.
Its innovators are not waiting.
And increasingly, the world’s investors are beginning to understand the scale of opportunity here.
The World Bank Group’s commitment to Africa is deep and enduring.
We are the largest external financier of education in the developing world.
We are investing in learning systems, skills development, and job creation across the continent.
And we are doing so as a knowledge institution—bringing global experience to support national ambition.
But the most important work will not be done by institutions like ours.
It will be done by you.
By the entrepreneurs who create jobs.
By the researchers who generate ideas that change policy.
By the public servants who build effective systems.
And by the teachers who prepare the next generation even better than this one.
Your ambition, energy, and determination will shape Africa’s future.
Our role is to help ensure that opportunity keeps pace with that ambition.
Thank you.
