The African Development Bank’s (AfDB) Economic Outlook 2020 for the continent had been lauded for being an effective blueprint for addressing the continent’s human capacity gap.
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The bank’s Communications and External Relations Department made this known in a statement on Friday.
The bank was praised at the 33rd African Union Summit in Addis Ababa.
According to the statement, the 2020 edition of the flagship report, under the theme Developing Africa’s workforce of the future, was presented at a side event attended by policymakers, global and regional development organisations, civil society, the media and academia.
It quoted the Commissioner for Economic Affairs at the African Union Commission, Victor Harison, as observing that the report tackled the challenges of human capital development “from a different perspective and focusing on the development of Africa’s workforce for the future through the prism of education, skills and infrastructure.
“The facts mentioned in the second part of this report are striking. It reminds us of the size of the investment that must be made in the development of human capital in Africa, an essential component for achieving productive transformation,” the Commissioner stated.
The Ethiopian Commissioner for job creation, Ephrem Lemango, highlighted a key part of the report on the importance of expanding education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
“In Ethiopia, STEM represents 70 per cent of graduates. Still, jobs need to be created for these graduates.”
The Chief Economist at the African Export-Import Bank, Hippolyte Fofack, that “the 2020 African Economic Outlook was timely because the skills to develop African economies are not yet developed.
“The importance of skills and youth entrepreneurship capacity to the success of the African Continental Free Trade Area can not be over emphasised” Fofack added.