World Bank Group President Ajay Banga has projected a shortfall of around 800 million jobs over the next 15 years, a figure he has used to press the case for restructuring development finance in ways that would expand employment pathways for the growing numbers of young people entering labour markets.
Speaking at the World Bank Group's 2026 Annual Meeting plenary in Bangkok, Banga put forward figures suggesting roughly 1.2 billion young people would be seeking work over the coming 15 years, against a projected supply of around 400 million available positions — a disparity he described as a projection rather than a certainty. Banga put forward a plan drawing on public finance, private investment, philanthropic funding, and technological tools as pathways toward faster economic development, telling the audience that the trajectory was not inevitable.
Ongoing armed conflicts, elevated energy and fertiliser prices, growing debt loads, and narrowing room for government spending were all cited as factors compounding the difficulties faced by lower-income nations.
In a statement, Banga outlined a range of structural changes the World Bank had pursued since he took the helm in June 2023, covering efforts to expand its lending capacity, cut through bureaucratic layers, and draw in private-sector investment. Preparation timelines dropped from 19 months down to nine, while the number of performance indicators tracked by the institution fell from 153 to just 22.
Over a ten-year span, the lending capacity of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development expanded by upwards of $100 billion as a direct result of those policy changes. Funding drawn from private sources climbed from roughly $35 billion in fiscal 2022 to $112 billion the following year, reflecting a roughly threefold expansion over that span. When the World Bank Group's own lending is factored in, the combined funding pool reached a total surpassing $230 billion.
Drawing investors from 110 countries in the prior year alone, the institution counted India among the nations contributing notably to its privately sourced capital flows, according to a statement from the organisation. Banga attributed the forward momentum to contributions from the United States, the United Kingdom, and India.
Attracting private-sector capital to the countries at the bottom of the global income ladder has long posed a formidable challenge. Across lower-income economies, the flow of privately sourced investment held steady at roughly $3 billion. Directing greater attention toward micro, small, and medium enterprises — especially those operating in fragile or conflict-affected settings where larger corporations tend to maintain a reduced footprint — had become a priority for the institution, Banga noted.
Of the $40 billion directed toward infrastructure, healthcare, education, and skills development over the prior year, a further 30 per cent of public-sector financing went toward strengthening policy frameworks and institutional structures.
Artificial intelligence drew attention from Banga as a tool with growing relevance to development work. Accessible AI applications show measurable potential for lifting agricultural productivity, adapting instruction to individual learners, and widening revenue paths for small-business owners — though the more powerful platforms underpinning those tools continue to require expensive infrastructure and specialised technical expertise.
Turning to energy, he noted that the Mission 300 initiative — which carries a target of bringing electricity to 300 million people across the continent before 2030 — had already extended power access to 59 million Africans. A fivefold expansion of the World Bank's minerals portfolio — spanning raw extraction through to downstream processing — is targeted for delivery across a five-year window, with job creation and domestic industry development forming part of the broader rationale.
A push by six multilateral development banks to align the way investments are packaged and transferred gained a public airing through Banga, with the arrangement designed to draw in institutional investors for existing projects while opening up development bank balance sheets to take on new ones.
