The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which was established in 2015,
was a watershed moment for the world of global diplomacy and development.
Almost every country in the world came together
to endorse the 17 goals for sustainable development.
The World Bank Group is fully aligned with the UN's SDGs.
In fact, our twin goals of ending
absolute poverty and promoting shared prosperity aligned to SDG one and 10.
But more importantly, almost everything that
the World Bank Group does to support our client countries,
aligns to at least one or more of the sustainable development goals.
So I'm here today to talk about,
what the World Bank Group is doing to work with
the youth of the world to achieve the sustainable development goals.
The World Bank Group is a core partner to the UN,
and we are fully aligned to the UN's sustainable development goals.
The World Bank's twin goals of ending absolute poverty
and promoting shared prosperity align neatly to SDG one and 10.
But more importantly, almost everything the World Bank Group
does aligns to at least one or more of the sustainable development goals.
One of our key priorities as a development finance institution,
was to try and help on the financing of the sustainable development goals.
And so, with the support of over 60 member countries of the World Bank Group,
the replenishment of IDA was a record
breaking $75 billion to support the poorest countries of the world.
But financing is only one of the critical inputs that are needed.
So the World Bank Group is really focusing on the know-how,
innovation, and implementation capacity of the world.
Now, in this context we have to really look,
where is the world today.
In some ways, life is better than ever.
Poverty continues to go down and life expectancy continues to increase
and quality of life indicators such as literacy rates,
continue to get better and better.
But not everything is rosy,
especially when you look into the future.
At current rates, the world will need 40 per cent more water,
50 percent more food,
and 80 percent more electricity by 2050.
And everywhere you look around the world,
there are some worrisome signs,
such as, conflict and fragility hitting every
country and every region of the world.
Moreover, there is an increasing need to really look
at issues that transcend countries and across borders,
such as climate change,
health pandemics and so on.
And this is a particular issue for young people.
For young people today,
an 18 year old today will be 30 in 2030.
So it's very important to make sure that all young people engage with
and own the future that we will all have.
The World Bank Group is working with young people in three different ways.
The first is, young people who work at the World Bank Group.
The second, is in the projects that we do.
And third, is in partnerships that we form that really affect the youth.
Let me give you an example of each one of these three.
One, hundreds of young people work at the World Bank Group,
but we want more.
The World Bank Group has a key list
of different employment opportunities and recruitment opportunities,
such as the junior professional officers program,
the analyst programme, the young professionals program.
And on our website,
you will see that there are also special nationality driven
recruitment programs for governments that
really want to support young people of their countries,
to work at the World Bank Group.
I encourage you to look at our website,
www.worldbank.org to look for recruitment opportunities.
Senior management has made it a priority to
recruit more and the best of the young people to work with us.
The second, the World Bank Group has over 2,500 interventions that involve youth.
And let me give you an example of one that I personally participated in.
About 10 years ago,
we used a tool that is often used in Silicon Valley called hackathon,
to focus the attention on a key topic that is actually at SDG.
It's about water.
So, when we convene the water hackathon in five different locations around the world,
there were some really important learning that I'd like to share with you.
First, it was pretty risky,
because instead of the World Bank Group providing a solution,
that we actually had to invite others to provide the solution.
And so we didn't know at the end of the day,
whether there would be something that was usable.
But in fact, it was unexpected,
the amount of solutions and creativity and innovation
that was unleashed just during that 24 hour period.
Second, it was filled with young people.
In fact, I can't remember the last time I went to a meeting of the World Bank Group
where over 90 percent of the people were below the age of 30.
But third, and most important lesson for me,
was that the winner of the Washington DC hackathon,
was an 18 year old PhD student.
And as I gave him his prize I asked him,
So now what should we do to make sure that World Bank clients can use your prize?
Which was an app to measure water quality.
And I was quite surprised at his answer.
I expected him to say,
please buy me a plane ticket and I would go to
that country and solve this problem for them.
In fact, what he said was,
my app is built on open data,
anybody that needs to access this app can just log into open data,
and get the app and customize it to their country.
This was a very important learning for me,
because it really illustrated that young people think of
knowledge as a tool to help others.
Knowledge is to be shared globally.
And this generosity of spirit and openness is something that I think young people
can really bring continuously to solve the world's biggest problem.
The third way in which the World Bank works with young people,
is in joining partnerships.
There are many worthy global and local partnerships that young people can join,
but I'd like to talk about one in particular.
It is called the Ideas For Action.
This is a partnership between the World Bank Group and Wharton Business School.
And it is a global competition,
where young people can submit
the best ideas and solutions for the world's biggest problems.
It is an annual competition,
and we really want this to be a way not only to motivate young people,
but to actually develop some real solutions.
Last year's winner of the Ideas For Action was a Nigerian entrant,
called the Kitovu trust.
In Nigeria, forty percent of agricultural output is lost due to
inefficient storage and farmers not getting the best awareness of the market prices.
So, the Kitovu trust has developed an app that can instantly
provide knowledge to farmers of agricultural conditions,
soil conditions and climate conditions,
and at the same time it links farmers with market producers.
And therefore, that to minimize the amount of
agricultural loss and promote greater prosperity,
as well as better agricultural production.
This is an annual competition and I would encourage everybody to log in,
and hopefully that we would see an idea from you.
Before I close, I want to give an example of a country where I am from.
When I was born, South Korea was one of the poorest countries in the world.
And in fact, World Bank economists almost
called this country with intractable problems.
Nobody could see a solution because our country didn't have natural resources,
or the abundant infrastructure.
But 50 years later,
South Korea is one of the top global economies in the world.
The lesson here, is not to be daunted by challenges,
but to really look for opportunities.
And for young people,
I think one of the natural opportunities to look for, is technology.
Technology is changing the world in ways that we have never even imagined
and it has brought so many fantastic results.
The cost of solar and wind electricity has gone down significantly,
in the last five years.
And cell phones and apps are really making
convenience and access to services much easier.
At the same time that some people are worried
that technology will take away jobs,
technology has created new jobs that we didn't think could be possible.
And we really count on young people to really
understand the full impact of technology
and we know that with young people's ingenuity, innovation,
generosity of spirit, that the world can reach the Sustainable Development Goals.