NAIROBI, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The World Bank has said it will invest 15 billion U.S. dollars into human capital projects in Africa in the 2012-2023 fiscal years.
The projects are part of World Bank's new plan to help promote skills development for African youth and enhance their competitiveness in a digitizing global economy.
According to the World Bank's Africa Human Capital Plan, the program aims at a reduction in child mortality to save 4 million lives, averting stunting among 11 million children and increasing learning outcomes for girls and boys in school by 20 percent by 2023. By doing so, it will increase African workers' productivity by 13 percent.
"Preventing a child from fulfilling his or her potential is not only fundamentally unjust, but it also limits the growth of economies whose future workers are held back," Hafez Ghanem, World Bank vice president for Africa, said in a statement issued on Thursday night.
"GDP per worker in Sub-Saharan Africa could be 2.5 times higher if everyone were healthy and enjoyed a good education from pre-school to secondary school," he added.
According to the World Bank, Sub-Saharan African region scores the lowest on the World Bank's Human Capital Index which gauges whether countries have adequately invested in the next generation of workers.
