The Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL) is the World Bank’s largest lab of its kind and a global leader in generating and using rigorous evidence to advance gender equality. Over the past 12 years, GIL’s research has shaped $12.8 billion in development spending across 224 projects in 53 countries—delivering $184 of operational impact for every $1 invested.
GIL’s evidence has influenced major World Bank operations, from digital transformation in Chad to financial inclusion reforms in Ethiopia, as well as national policies in countries such as Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Lesotho, Mozambique, and Nigeria. These reforms have addressed barriers in education, finance, and women’s economic empowerment, helping to ensure that evidence translates into action.
Our research is also driving impact at scale: ongoing projects informed by GIL’s adolescent girls’ programming are expected to reach over 43 million beneficiaries. In recognition of this work, the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group named Africa GIL one of the top examples of embedding knowledge into operations in its 2025 report Learning in World Bank Lending.
Read Africa GIL's latest influence sketch to learn more about our impact on policy and programming
Achieving Change at Scale
Africa GIL found that helping women to think like an entrepreneur through a psychology-based training raised their profits by 40%. Our evidence and efforts have resulted in this program being scaled-up across 46 World Bank supported projects in 31 countries, shifting nearly $1.4 billion in development spending. We also successfully adapted this approach for women farmers.
We found adolescent girls’ empowerment programs that increased young women’s earnings by 80% and employment by 72%, reduced forced sex and childbearing, and cushioned girls against conflict and pandemic shocks. Our evidence and support to policymakers has helped bring these programs to more than two dozen countries, reaching more than 1.3 million beneficiaries and influencing $1.1 billion in development spending.
Our evidence revealed that providing couples with information on the benefits of joint land registration increased co-titling by 25%. This approach has now been scaled in multiple countries, including Uganda, where the government is issuing at least 200,000 joint or individual land titles for women across the country.
GIL findings from an impact evaluation of a social protection program found that less frequent (quarterly) cash transfers achieve the same positive impact on women at half the cost as monthly transfers. This finding has influenced $2.9 billion worth of spending across 4 World Bank supported projects.