The Africa GIL is the largest lab of its kind in the World Bank and is a global leader in generating and using rigorous evidence to advance gender equality. The Lab has more than 100 completed or ongoing impact evaluations in more than 30 countries across Africa.
GIL’s evidence is leading to impact at scale. Over the past decade, GIL has influenced the design of $10 billion in development spending — yielding $188 of operational impact for every $1 invested in the Lab.
GIL’s evidence has also shaped key policies across the region, including the Ethiopia National Ten-Year Perspective Plans for the agriculture and industries and trade sectors and the Nigeria National Development Plan (2021-2025).
Read Africa GIL's latest influence sketch to learn more about our impact on policy and programming
Achieving Change at Scale
Africa GIL found that helping women to think like an entrepreneur through a psychology-based training raised their profits by 40%. Our evidence and efforts have resulted in this program being scaled-up across 46 World Bank supported projects in 31 countries, shifting nearly $1.4 billion in development spending. We also successfully adapted this approach for women farmers.
We found adolescent girls’ empowerment programs that increased young women’s earnings by 80% and employment by 72%, reduced forced sex and childbearing, and cushioned girls against conflict and pandemic shocks. Our evidence and support to policymakers has helped bring these programs to more than two dozen countries, reaching more than 1.3 million beneficiaries and influencing $1.1 billion in development spending.
Our evidence revealed that providing couples with information on the benefits of joint land registration increased co-titling by 25%. This approach has now been scaled in multiple countries, including Uganda, where the government is issuing at least 200,000 joint or individual land titles for women across the country.
GIL findings from an impact evaluation of a social protection program found that less frequent (quarterly) cash transfers achieve the same positive impact on women at half the cost as monthly transfers. This finding has influenced $2.9 billion worth of spending across 4 World Bank supported projects.