Your Children May Learn, Earn Less In The Future – World Bank Warns Nigeria, Others

Jim Young Kim, the World Bank President, has warned that many African nations would not be able to compete in a digitalized economy as many of the low skill jobs would soon be taken over by technology.

Kim said this today at the ongoing spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in Washington D.C.

He noted that technology could help some African countries leapfrog into finding new ways in driving growth in their economy.

According to Kim, “When we say rates of childhood stunting over 30 percent, meaning these children their brains are simply not as well-developed as their non-stunted peers, and that they will learn less and they will earn less in the future. We have good data on that.”

He said when stunting rates are over 30 percent, sometimes close to 50 percent of that group of young children will not be prepared to compete in the digital economy in the future.

Kim argues that, many people understand the place of physical capital, infrastructure and investment, but not many understand the place of improved health and educational systems.

“Our sense is that as economies become more digitized, relationship between health outcomes and educational outcomes is only going to get stronger over time.”

He added, stressing that, it is “ time for all countries to really take a hard look at how well they’ve invested in their own people because that is likely going to be the most important determinant of whether they’ll be able to keep up with economic growth.”

Now, it’s not just for children. It’s also skills programs for adults. The human capital agenda, I think, has been neglected for far too long, and what we’ve shown in our

According to the report released at the meeting titled “ The Changing Wealth of Nations,” human capital represents 65 per cent of all the wealth in the world.

He said “ Every African country has to look much more seriously at how it improves its own domestic resource mobilization. So in other words, they should be better at collecting taxes, you know, to just provide the basic services we think countries should collect at least 15 percent of GDP in taxes. Many countries don’t reach that level.”

He called on African countries to remove fossil fuel subsidies that are often very regressive, and only help the rich more than they help the poor.

Kim also said that Tobacco taxes have proved effective at raising revenue and reducing smoking and money from it can be used to finance a lot of things.

“So there’s so many things that can be done to help countries both invest in physical infrastructure and also invest in human capital, but it requires reform and it requires courage. And so I know these kinds of things that I’m talking about are difficult, but please let all the African leaders know that the World Bank Group’s ready to help them undertake all those measures.” He added.