From the moment she was little, Leah Francis Basu was obsessed with planes. “I just loved aircraft,” she says, still sounding amazed when she talks about the first time she understood how they actually fly. “Learning Bernoulli’s principle blew my mind—how faster air over the wing creates lower pressure and literally lifts tons of metal into the sky.”
That childhood fascination turned into a real career. Leah is now an aircraft maintenance engineer with Precision Air, one of Tanzania’s biggest airlines. She checks that planes are safe before every flight, using skills she picked up at the National Institute of Transport (NIT). What made it possible? A scholarship from the World Bank-backed EASTRIP project, which supports technical colleges across East Africa.
“The scholarship lit a fire under me,” she says. “Someone believed in me enough to pay for my training—I couldn’t let them down.” Today she’s living her dream and helping Tanzania’s aviation sector grow.
Leah is one of thousands. EASTRIP is working with 16 top technical institutes in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania, revamping courses, bringing in industry partners, and switching to hands-on, competency-based training. The results speak for themselves: these colleges have increased their training capacity tenfold, and graduate employment has jumped from 47% to 79%.
A whole generation is on the move.
In Senegal, Abdoulaye Ba spent two years at ISEP Thiès learning graphic and digital arts. Now he runs a startup that uses VR and AR to let people “walk through” Senegal’s cultural heritage sites. It’s boosting tourism, creating jobs, and showing how creative skills plus tech can open completely new industries.
But the bigger picture is still tough. Every month, roughly a million young Africans hit the job market. Too many leave school without being able to read properly—86% of 10-year-olds in some areas—and end up stuck. Formal jobs are scarce, women are underrepresented in technical fields, and many training centers still struggle with unreliable electricity and internet.
As Erik Fernstrom, World Bank director for infrastructure in East and Southern Africa, puts it: “We’ve promised electricity to 300 million people by 2030. That won’t happen without thousands of skilled electricians, technicians, and engineers trained locally.”
**Something new is starting.**
In late September 2025, more than 300 senior government officials from 25 African countries gathered in Nairobi for the first Africa Skills for Jobs Policy Academy, co-hosted by the World Bank, the Kenyan government, and regional universities. For a full week they dug into what actually works: better early-childhood learning, stronger links between colleges and employers, financing models that deliver results fast.
World Bank VP Mamta Murthi set the tone on day one: “Skills aren’t something you pick up once and you’re done. It starts in preschool and never really stops. Too many kids fall through the cracks early, and we spend years trying to fix it later.”
The standout moment? A packed room where ministers sat next to CEOs from energy, construction, agribusiness, tourism, and finance. No speeches—just straight talk about the exact skills shortages holding companies back and how to fix them together. One private-sector leader summed it up: “We’re done with workshops that end in nice photos. Let’s co-fund training centers, guarantee internships, and hire the graduates.”
Mary Porter Peschka, IFC’s regional director, called it one of the most encouraging things she’d seen in years: “Business leaders stood up and said, ‘Here’s exactly what we need, here’s what actually works, and yes—we’re ready to put money in.’”
When young people get the right training—practical, industry-linked, up-to-date—they don’t just find jobs. They create them. They raise productivity. They help their countries compete globally. And, like Leah checking engines before takeoff or Abdoulaye building virtual museums, they get to build the future they always wanted.
One scholarship, one modernized workshop, one honest conversation between a minister and a CEO at a time—Africa’s skills revolution is already happening.