Angelini links Africa's growth to skills and energy access
Africa needs worker skills alongside energy and AI infrastructure, Bank of Italy Senior Deputy Governor Paolo Angelini said on October 26, 2026. He opened the second Agorà Conference in Palermo.
600 million workers and growing
Africa's labor force reached 600 million in 2025; projections put it at more than twice that level by 2050.
Angelini said skills determine whether infrastructure and technology deliver lasting productivity gains and quality jobs.
Nearly 600 million Africans lacked electricity in 2024.
Mission 300 has since connected around 60 million across 40 countries and targets 300 million by 2030.
Projects co-financed through Italy's Mattei Plan aim to reach nearly 9 million by 2030.
Clean-energy financing costs are two to three times those in advanced economies and China, reflecting macroeconomic, political and institutional risks.
Angelini urged government reforms to reduce risk premiums and closer cooperation between training institutions and firms.
Adoption before frontier models
Angelini prioritized adapting existing AI tools to local languages, institutions and infrastructure over developing frontier models.
An offline crop-disease tool in East Africa and a text-based mathematics tutor in Ghana illustrate this approach; the tutor delivered gains equivalent to an extra school year.
He stressed literacy, numeracy and reliable, secure data alongside digital skills.
An International Energy Agency survey identified insufficient internal digital skills as energy companies' leading barrier to AI adoption.
Jobs are the test
Angelini's proposed yardstick is employment, not training totals.
He said higher productivity does not automatically deliver more or better jobs.
He proposed using future Agorà meetings to review project delivery, identify bottlenecks and assess whether investment produces job-relevant skills.