World Bank President Ajay Banga Talks Jobs and Development at IOP Forum

World Bank President Ajay S. Banga said global development initiatives must prioritize job creation at a Harvard Institute of Politics Forum on Monday.

Banga said the World Bank — an international development institution which provides loans to businesses and governments in an effort to address poverty — has worked to prioritize local business growth, anti-corruption and transparency initiatives, and building infrastructure.

“Very rarely do countries get those three things right, but if you go back and look at any country that has progressed its way through the system, they’ve got those things right,” he said.

Banga, who began his five-year tenure as president in 2023, was previously the President and CEO of Mastercard, Vice Chairman at private equity firm General Atlantic, and head of Citigroup Asia Pacific.

The event was moderated by Harvard Center for International Development Director Asim I. Khwaja, a member of the University’s task force to address Islamophobia. The two discussed how job creation can lead to sustainable economic growth and deter migration.

“We should think about the aid architecture not in terms of individual components of it, but how we can make lemonade out of the lemons. And that has to be jobs,” Banga said.

“Great jobs get created on the ground once you go past those three pillars of enabling infrastructure, policy, and the private sector” he said. “If you don’t create those jobs, you’re going to get a surge in migration.”

But Banga said that now, population growth in emerging markets is projected to dramatically outpace job growth, which would incentivize several hundred million younger workers to leave their home countries.

And if they do decide to immigrate, he added, they will have to contend with restrictive immigration policies when on the job market in other countries.

Originally from India, Banga moved to the U.S. and was naturalized in 2007. He said hostility toward migrants, especially on the assumption that they immigrated illegally, can “tear our societies apart.”

“I’ve tried to do what I can to repay the country of my adoption, but on the street, who would know that I’m legal or illegal? I don’t want me and my wife and children to carry the burden of being thought of as illegal,” he said.

Andrea E. Weires, a masters student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who attended the forum, said she wished Banga had discussed the importance of early education and literacy on economic growth.

“The focus on careers can really turn attention toward vocational training or higher education, when really a lot of the deep educational needs start much earlier, especially in developing countries that don’t have a lot of investment in early childhood education,” Weires said in an interview after the event.

When asked to choose between investing in job training programs or working with businesses to create jobs, Banga said “neither,” adding that job creation should not rely on outsourced work from “the Western world” or artificial intelligence.

Banga said the World Bank and other development organizations need substantial domestic support for initiatives to work.

“We should not overweight what the Bank does or does not do in the country. It’s a catalyst, but the country has to own things and do something about it,” he said.