High fertility and declining mortality rates have led to a very young population in most Sub-Saharan African countries. The region s labor force is expected to increase by 11 million people per year over the next 10 years. Most of this increase will be new entrants seeking their first job. While the younger generation is better educated than their parents, they often lack the means to translate that education into productive employment. Today, most work is in nonwage jobs on farms and in household enterprises. Even if greater economic activity were to create the conditions for robust growth and economic transformation, the private modern wage sector in low- and lower-middle-income countries could not absorb all the applicants. This report focuses on how to improve the quality of all jobs and to meet the aspirations of youth. It emphasizes that building a strong foundation for human capital development can play an important role in boosting earnings, and it argues that a balanced approach focused on building skills, raising productivity, and increasing the demand for labor is necessary. Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa notes that many youth employment challenges are problems of employment in general. However, youth is a time of transition, and young people face particular constraints to accessing productive work. The report brings together original analysis of household and labor force surveys; it reviews the experience of a number of promising interventions across the continent; it draws from qualitative studies in several countries; and it surveys the most up-to-date evidence from rigorous evaluations of policies and programs. From this information base, the report provides guidance to policy makers on how to intervene along two dimensions human capital and the business environment and in three priority areas agriculture, household enterprises, and the modern wage sector. The ultimate goals are to increase productivity, improve livelihoods, and multiply opportunities for young people."

This book is about the threats to education quality in the developing world that cannot be explained by lack of resources. It reviews the observed phenomenon of service delivery failures in public education: cases where programs and policies increase the inputs to education but do not produce effective services where it counts - in schools and classrooms. It documents what we know about the extent and costs of such failures across low and middle-income countries. And it further develops the conceptual model posited in the World Development Report 2004: that a root cause of low-quality and inequitable public services - not only in education - is the weak accountability of providers to both their supervisors and clients. The central focus of the book, however, is a new story. It is that developing countries are increasingly adopting innovative strategies to attack these problems. Drawing on new evidence from 22 rigorous impact evaluations across 11 developing countries, this book examines how three key strategies to strengthen accountability relationships in developing country school systems have affected school enrollment, completion and student learning. The book reviews the motivation and global context for education reforms aimed at strengthening provider accountability. It provides the rationally and synthesizes the evidence on the impacts of three key lines of reform: (1) policies that use the power of information to strengthen the ability of clients of education services (students and their parents) to hold providers accountable for results; (2) policies that promote school-based management that is increase schools autonomy to make key decisions and control resources, often empowering parents to play a larger role; (3) teacher incentives reforms that specifically aim at making teachers more accountable for results, either by making contract tenure dependent on performance, or offering performance-linked pay. The book summarizes the lessons learned, draws cautious conclusions about possible complementarities across different types of accountability-focused reforms if they are implemented in tandem, considers issues related to scaling up reform efforts and the political economy of reform, and suggests directions for future work."