This brief from the World Bank's Africa Gender Innovation Lab sets out the top policy lessons from its impact evaluations on empowering adolescent girls. It opens with the context: overlapping crises including climate change, the continuing recovery from COVID-19, regional conflict and rising food insecurity have deepened the inequalities adolescent girls face and made them more vulnerable. For many girls these pressures force early decisions about work and fertility, limit access to formal education and expose them further to restrictive social norms.

Drawing on evaluations across more than 30 countries in Africa, the brief identifies what works to empower adolescent girls: creating safe spaces, accounting for the barriers that keep girls from participating, providing scholarships to keep girls in school, using mentorship, and engaging boys to improve sexual and reproductive health outcomes. With 60 per cent of Africa's population under the age of 25, it argues that investing in adolescent girls is central to accelerating economic growth and reducing intergenerational poverty.