2 weeks Ago By Adeyinka Adeniji
The World Bank Group on Wednesday announced the launch of a new phase of its Private Sector Investment Lab, aimed at streamlining efforts to drive job creation—a central focus of the Lab over the past 18 months. According to a World Bank Group news release (2025/068/EXC) made available to New Telegraph, the new phase includes the addition of prominent global business leaders, including Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote, Chairman/CEO of Dangote Group; Bill Anderson, CEO of Bayer AG; Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chair of Bharti Enterprises; and Mark Hoplamazian, President & CEO of Hyatt Hotels Corporation. These business moguls were admitted based on their track record of generating employment in developing economies, aligning with the Bank’s renewed emphasis on job creation as a key driver of sustainable development.
Over the past 18 months, the Lab has identified major barriers to private sector investment in developing countries and tested actionable solutions through partnerships with leaders from global financial institutions. The statement noted: “As the Lab enters its implementation phase, it is also expanding its membership to include private sector leaders in sectors critical to job creation—such as infrastructure and energy, agribusiness, healthcare, tourism, and manufacturing. These industries have a proven ability to translate investment into broad-based employment and economic opportunity.
” President of the World Bank Group, Ajay Banga, emphasized that the expansion will help the Group achieve its strategic objectives and foster mutual benefit for investors and economies. “With the expanded membership,” Banga said, “we are mainstreaming this work across our operations and tying it directly to the jobs agenda that is driving our strategy.” “This isn’t about altruism—it’s about helping the private sector see a path to investments that will deliver returns and uplift people and economies alike.
It’s central to our mandate,” he added. Banga also acknowledged the contributions of the Lab’s original members and welcomed the new entrants with optimism. “We are grateful to the Lab leaders who helped deliver such important results in the first phase.
We welcome our new members’ support in continuing our focus on five key areas: regulatory and policy certainty; guarantees as the most widely used and understood instruments to address political and credit risks; foreign exchange risk; scaling different forms of equity; and creating an asset class and liquid market to attract institutional funds,” he said. Chaired by Shriti Vadera, Chairman of Prudential plc, the Lab’s founding members include senior executives from AXA, BlackRock, HSBC, Macquarie, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Ninety One, Ping An Group, Royal Philips, Standard Bank, Standard Chartered, Sustainable Energy for All, Tata Sons, Temasek, and Three Cairns Group..
