Publication: Pathways to Prosperity for Adolescent Girls in Mozambique
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2025-06-25
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2025-06-25
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Mozambique stands at a critical juncture in addressing adolescent girls’ pathways to prosperity. Due to prevailing vulnerabilities, there is momentum to strengthen the country’s educational foundations to comprehensive empowerment that addresses economic and social dimensions simultaneously. By focusing on the areas highlighted in this brief - girls’ school enrolment, preventing child marriage and early childbearing, adapting interventions to vulnerable girls, and supporting school-to-work transition - Mozambique can unlock the potential of its adolescent girls while addressing persistent disparities across geographic, gender, and socioeconomic lines. The economic returns of such investments are substantial, not only for the girls themselves but for the country’s broader development trajectory. Addressing these challenges requires coordinated action across multiple sectors, with interventions tailored to the diverse contexts within Mozambique and particular attention to the most vulnerable populations, particularly those affected by conflict and humanitarian emergencies.
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“World Bank. 2025. Pathways to Prosperity for Adolescent Girls in Mozambique. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/43376 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
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Publication Pathways to Prosperity for Adolescent Girls in Kenya(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-25)Kenya is at a pivotal moment in advancing prosperity for adolescent girls. With a solid educational base already established, the country has a unique chance to broaden its efforts toward comprehensive empowerment by addressing both economic and social dimensions. Prioritizing school-to-work transitions, digital inclusion, effective policy implementation, and context-specific strategies can help unlock the full potential of adolescent girls. These efforts are essential not only to reduce disparities across geographic, gender, and socioeconomic lines but also to generate significant economic returns that benefit the nation as a whole. 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These preliminary results provide strong evidence for further investment and research into young women's livelihood programs in Liberia.Publication Empowering Adolescent Girls(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-12)Nearly 60 percent of Uganda's population is aged below twenty. This generation faces health and economic challenges associated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), early pregnancy, and unemployment. Whether these challenges are due to a lack of information and or vocational skills is however uncertain. A programme was conducted to provide: (i) vocational training to run small-scale enterprises; and (ii) information on health and risky behaviors. The programme conducted, positively impacts behaviors on both economic and health margins. On economic margins, the intervention raises the likelihood that girls engage in income generating activities by 32 percent mainly driven by increased participation in self-employment. On health related margins, self-reported routine condom usage increases by 50 percent among the sexually active, and the probability of having a child decreases by 26 percent. Strikingly, the share of girls reporting sex against their will drops from 21 percent to almost zero. The findings suggest combined interventions might be more effective among adolescent girls than single-pronged interventions aiming to improve labor market outcomes solely through vocational training, or to change risky behaviors solely through education programmes.Publication The Economic Participation of Adolescent Girls and Young Women : Why Does It Matter?(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-12)This note summarizes available research on the impact of schooling and employment of adolescent girls and young women on earnings and poverty reduction, demographic outcomes, child development outcomes, and female empowerment. It identifies key implications of this research for the formulation of public policy.Publication Empowering Adolescent Girls in a Crisis Context(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-07)In Sierra Leone, the empowerment and livelihoods for adolescents (ELA) initiative sought to enhance adolescent girls’ social and economic empowerment by providing life skills training, livelihood training, and credit support to start income-generating activities. The Ebola crisis occurred during the project, resulting in curbed implementation. In contrast, younger girls (12 to 17 years old) who resided in communities that benefitted from the program in high Ebola disruption areas were more likely to be in school and saw their numeracy and literacy levels improve. However, as younger women spend less time with men in the presence of ELA, men likely shift their attention to older girls: the evaluation finds an increase in unwanted and transactional sex by older girls in areas highly exposed to the Ebola crisis. As the program was implemented, the Ebola epidemic hit Sierra Leone. First, in an effort to stem the spread of the disease, the government-imposed quarantines, limited travel, and closed public spaces such as markets in certain areas, which significantly impacted the economic activities of men and women. Second, schools were closed for an entire academic year. Finally, Sierra Leone’s limited health resources were diverted into caring for patients and preventing the spread of the epidemic, limiting their ability to attend to other issues such as sexual and reproductive health. 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