Giving Compass' Take:

• At the African Development Bank annual meeting, Jim Yong Kim commented on the industrialization of Africa. He wants the continent to focus on the making 'critical inputs' for the future economy rather than focus on specific industry growth right now. 

• How can leaders in Africa develop partnerships and successful models that will accelerate growth? Have they done so already?

• Read the five takeaways from the World Bank Spring meetings. 

Korea invested in education long before the World Bank Group thought it should. This is the lesson — rather than Korea’s industrial policy — that World Bank President Jim Yong Kim hopes attendees take away from the African Development Bank’s 53rd annual meeting in Korea’s port city of Busan.

In fact, most of the countries that have risen from poverty and graduated from middle income to high income have invested in education before the World Bank deemed them ready, according to Kim, whose attendance marks the first time a World Bank president has attended an AfDB annual meeting.

Accelerating Africa’s industrialization is the focus of the annual meeting and a prominent pillar of AfDB’s High 5 agenda, that calls for the development of the continent with a focus on smart industrial policy, structural transformations, and a move toward processing raw materials into value-added products — goals the bank allocated $1.2 billion in 2017 to achieve.

For Africa, it often comes down to competing priorities, Abdu Mukhtar, director of industrial and trade development for AfDB added. “At the same time you’re trying to build infrastructure, you’re trying to build human capacity, and you also want to improve the policies … but I would say if you ask me the top two things that Africa should do — focusing on human capital development and education is number one for me, then infrastructure.”

Rather than identifying particular industries that will take Africa forward, Kim would rather see a focus on the “set of critical inputs that will prepare us for the industry we will see,” Kim said, making a plug for the World Bank’s human capital index, that ranks countries according to how well they produce health and education outcomes for their populations.

Read the full article about Africa's industrialization by Kelli Rogers at Devex International Development