Adolescent girls and young women in Sub-Saharan Africa face intersecting challenges—from climate shocks and post-pandemic recovery to persistent gender norms—that limit their opportunities. With more than 60% of Africa’s population under 25—and nearly 70% under 30—the continent’s demographic profile makes investing in adolescent girls’ empowerment and youth employment—especially for young women—critical to inclusive growth and breaking cycles of poverty. The Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) generates rigorous evidence and actionable insights to design and scale interventions that strengthen girls’ agency, enhance skills, and expand economic opportunities for youth, particularly young women. Our work informs policies and programs that drive gender equality and resilience across the continent. Click Here to Watch Video
Across Africa, agriculture is a primary sector of employment—and African women provide about 40% of the agricultural labor across the continent. Yet women farmers face systemic barriers to success, leading to large gender gaps in agricultural productivity. In the face of crises that exacerbate food insecurity, women farmers need targeted support to secure their livelihoods and mitigate existing gender inequalities.
Women make up more than half of the entrepreneurs in Africa. Yet, on average, for every dollar of profits that men entrepreneurs earn, women entrepreneurs earn 66 cents. Supporting women to enter entrepreneurship and grow their firms could translate into higher economic growth for Sub-Saharan Africa.
Land is a key productive asset for rural households in Africa—and property rights thus play a critical role as they govern the allocation of this fundamental resource. Reflecting underlying gender inequality in the society, however, customary norms confer disproportionately weaker land rights to women, feeding into a cycle that further limits their economic opportunities. GIL's research aims to identify effective policy interventions to strengthen women’s property rights.
The way men and women participate in the labor market is shaped by social expectations about who should earn money for the family and who should take care of the home. These expectations are reinforced by institutions and systems that often assume men are the main breadwinners and women are the caregivers. For example, government programs may focus on giving farming advice to men and nutrition advice to women. People also tend to follow these norms—sometimes to gain approval and success, or to avoid criticism. To create more opportunities for women in the economy, it’s important to reduce biases in institutions and to change ideas about appropriate roles and behaviors for men and women.
Violence against women and girls violates basic human rights and has large negative social and economic consequences. The Gender Innovation Lab is committed to finding effective ways to prevent this violence, including through targeted interventions, enhancements to government programs, and policy reforms.
Women are disproportionately exposed to poverty and economic insecurity, as they are overrepresented in informal and low-paid work and carry most unpaid care responsibilities. Social protection systems - such as cash transfers, public works, and productive inclusion programs - play a critical role in protecting vulnerable populations and promoting women’s economic empowerment. The GIL’s Social Protection research agenda works with governments and partners to evaluate and strengthen programs so they better reach and empower women. We test and identify innovations that go beyond income support - integrating climate-smart, norm-shifting interventions, socio-emotional skills training, digital tools, and more - to help women build resilience, enhance productivity, and strengthen agency. Our research examines how programs can work effectively at scale, how they influence households, communities, and local economies, and how they can deliver the greatest impact in a cost-effective way. We generate rigorous evidence on how to make social protection systems work for women - and use that evidence to inform the design of gender-responsive programs that lift women out of poverty and foster more inclusive and resilient societies.
Gender Innovation Policy Initiative for Ethiopia (GIPIE)
Despite Ethiopia’s high gross domestic product (GDP) growth and poverty reduction over the past decade, current gender gaps show that challenges remain to realizing inclusive growth and the full potential of women’s economic empowerment. In Ethiopia, women still lag men across several important economic dimensions, including labor force participation, agricultural productivity, earnings from self-employment, and wage income. Many of these gaps are deeply rooted in social norms and have important implications for broader poverty alleviation and growth at the national level. Moreover, multiple shocks in recent years—including droughts, floods, locust infestations, conflict, the COVID-19 pandemic, and macroeconomic issues—have exacerbated existing challenges to improving welfare for women, men, and their households. While the Government of Ethiopia has already made significant commitments and investments aiming to close the country’s gender gaps, to accelerate progress towards gender equality more evidence is needed to determine why these gaps persist and what we can do to solve them.
Africa GIL’s country-level initiative—the Gender Innovation Policy Initiative for Ethiopia (GIPIE)—is working with policy makers and their development partners in Ethiopia to answer these extremely complex questions. By designing, experimenting, and evaluating possible solutions using rigorous impact evaluations, GIPIE is shedding light on the extent to which programs and policies are successfully addressing key constraints faced by women and deepening our understanding of how these challenges may hinder progress towards national development goals. GIPIE’s work program focuses broadly on three key themes: (i) agriculture and rural economic activities, (ii) entrepreneurship and financial inclusion, and (iii) social protection and jobs. Anchored in GIPIE’s entrepreneurship pillar, GIL leads an innovation hub dedicated to increasing women’s access to capital through its Innovations in Financing Women Entrepreneurs (IFWE) initiative. IFWE works with financial institutions to pilot new products and services, generates rigorous evidence on what works to promote women entrepreneurs’ financial inclusion, and provides technical and advisory services to development programs that target women-owned MSMEs to advance the provision of capital to women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia.
Nigeria stands at a promising crossroads for economic reform and social progress, with tremendous opportunities to unlock the full potential of women across the country. According to a 2022 World Bank report, closing gender gaps in earnings across key economic sectors could boost Nigeria’s GDP by at least 2.3%—and the actual gains may be even greater. By advancing gender equality, it is clear that Nigeria can both enhance women’s wellbeing and drive broad-based economic growth.
To help realize these opportunities, the World Bank established the Nigeria Gender Innovation Lab (NiGIL). NiGIL is dedicated to generating robust evidence on effective solutions for women’s and girls’ empowerment in Nigeria with a focus on expanding their access to jobs and economic opportunity. The Lab works hand-in-hand with Nigerian policymakers, providing them with the latest insights and data to increase the impact of their decision-making and policy design.
Nigerian leaders have already demonstrated strong commitment to advancing women’s economic empowerment. With a growing body of evidence on what works, Nigeria is well-positioned to make significant strides in empowering millions of women—helping them and their families thrive and contributing to a more prosperous, inclusive economy.
Expanding access to childcare services in Sub-Saharan Africa holds significant promise not only for promoting child development but also for advancing women's economic engagement and productivity, thereby driving economic growth. In Sub-Saharan Africa and globally, women disproportionately shoulder the burden of unpaid care work, compared to men, and are predominantly the primary caregivers for children. This imbalance in unpaid care responsibilities holds back women's economic participation and productivity. The lack of access to quality childcare services is particularly acute among the poorest and most vulnerable households. Recent rigorous evidence from low- and middle-income countries demonstrates that the availability of childcare positively influences female labor force participation, with some studies also highlighting gains in productivity, income, and job quality. Concurrently, a robust body of evidence underscores that investments in early childhood development yield substantial benefits for children's school readiness, lifelong learning outcomes, and future employment and earnings. By positively impacting both mothers and children, childcare provision can play a crucial role in reducing poverty and stimulating economic growth.
The Africa Gender Innovation Lab’s measurement work spans different themes and initiatives.
The Measures for Advancing Gender Equality (MAGNET) MAGNET is a cross-institutional initiative to improve data on women’s agency and enable more reliable tracking of progress toward gender equality. Led by the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab (AFRGIL) and the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS), in collaboration with IFPRI, the International Rescue Committee, and researchers from Oxford University, Makerere University, the Asian Development Bank, The Brookings Institution, Tufts University, and CUNEF University, MAGNET has developed 24 innovative tools that both broaden what we measure and deepen how we measure agency. These tools have been rigorously tested across 17 countries (and counting) in Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Central Asia, and South Asia. MAGNET offers validated approaches to better capture (i) ownership and control of assets, (ii) goal-setting and decision-making, and (iii) sense of control and efficacy—ready for integration into both small- and large-scale surveys. Visit MAGNET’s Resource Center.
Effective Socio-emotional Skills to Gain Economic Empowerment (ESTEEM) Led by the World Bank's Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) in collaboration with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), ESTEEM addresses a critical gap in understanding which socio- emotional skills drive economic outcomes in low- and middle-income contexts. Through rigorous psychometric validation across six Sub-Saharan African countries—Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, South Africa, and Tanzania—the initiative has produced a comprehensive framework of 15 validated measurement tools. These freely available instruments capture the multidimensional nature of socio-emotional skills: distinguishing between intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions, awareness versus management capabilities, and agentic versus communal orientations. Visit ESTEEM's Resource Center.
Sub-Saharan Africa has one of the largest gender gaps in mobile internet usage globally, with over 190 million women not using these services, representing a 37% gender gap. Major obstacles to women's access and use of digital technologies include the high cost of devices and data plans (and women's lower financial capacity to afford digital access), low female literacy (including digital literacy), ID requirements, risk of online abuse, and a lack of content and services tailored to women. Bridging the gender digital divide is crucial for several reasons. Digital skills and tools are increasingly necessary for accessing services like health, education, social protection, and financial services. Furthermore, digital technologies are key to job creation on a continent with a growing workforce; an estimated 230 million jobs in Sub-Saharan Africa will require digital skills by 2030. To remain competitive in the digital economy, countries must prioritize education and develop their workforce's digital skills, particularly for women, whose employment is vital for economic growth, personal agency, and improved health, education, and economic outcomes.
Occupational sex segregation is the phenomenon that women tend to sort into different occupations (or sectors) than men, and the occupations dominated by women tend to be less profitable. Unconscious biases, societal norms, limited exposure to these sectors, and constraints on time and capital are among the numerous factors that deter women from pursuing opportunities in male-dominated sectors (MDS). The potential gains from breaking down these barriers are immense. It is estimated that eliminating gendered occupational segregation entirely could yield an additional 10 percent increase in GDP today (Hsieh et al. 2019).
Socio-emotional skills - such as self-awareness, perseverance, empathy, and self-control - play a crucial role in shaping people’s economic opportunities, from the type of jobs they access to the income they earn. Strengthening these skills has emerged as a critical strategy to improve labor market outcomes and narrow gender gaps.
Yet the specific skills that drive women’s economic empowerment in Sub-Saharan Africa remain poorly understood. Labor market structures and social norms in the region differ from those in high- income countries, where most of the existing research has been conducted. The GIL’s work seeks to fill this evidence gap by identifying which socio-emotional skills matter most for women and men across diverse African contexts, and how these skills interact with mental health and social norms to influence economic empowerment. In partnership with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), the Africa GIL is developing free, open-access tools to measure socio-emotional skills and testing innovative interventions - from socio- emotional skills training to mental health support - that can enhance agency, productivity, and well-being.
Promoting women's socioeconomic empowerment involves expanding their control over resources and decisions critical to their well-being. Engaging men in these efforts is crucial, as they often hold significant power and influence within households and communities. Additionally, increasing men's participation in unpaid household and care work is vital for expanding women's economic opportunities. Over the past two decades, practitioners and researchers have explored methods to involve men in preventing gender-based violence and promoting sexual and reproductive health. More recently, there has been a growing focus on involving men in women's economic empowerment initiatives. This approach acknowledges the persistent gender inequality in resource control and aims to protect women from potential backlash resulting from their improved socioeconomic status.
Rural women in Sub-Saharan Africa are disproportionately affected by climate change due to pre-existing gender inequalities that both increase adaptation needs and constrain response capacities. Adaptation strategies such as climate-smart agriculture, weather insurance, income diversification, migration, alongside adaptive social protection, are a crucial part of resilience to climate shocks and changes in climatic conditions. Limited access to finance and assets, insecure land tenure, restrictive gender norms, lower human and social capital, and constrained access to climate information constrain women’s ability to take up those adaptative strategies. Improving women’s adaptive capacity requires evidence-backed, gender-responsive policies.
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