From digital workforce pipelines to entrepreneurial capital platforms, a new generation of builders is reshaping how opportunity moves through the global economy.
Inside a conference room at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C., policymakers, development specialists, and technology leaders gathered to discuss the future of jobs in a rapidly digitizing global economy.
Among the speakers was Mansur Kasali, a social entrepreneur building platforms at the intersection of finance, technology, and economic mobility. Notably, Kasali became the youngest person in history to address the World Bank–IMF Annual Meetings in a technical capacity, joining experts and policymakers examining how emerging technologies could shape job creation.
In his opening, Kasali offered a simple but powerful observation.
“The defining economic challenge of our time isn’t whether opportunity exists,” he said. “It’s that millions of people remain invisible to formal systems that allocate opportunity.”
For Kasali, that insight has become the organizing principle behind a growing set of initiatives designed to expand access to capital, digital skills, and entrepreneurial infrastructure across both developed and emerging markets.
Across his work in capital access, digital workforce development, and cross-sector partnerships, Kasali focuses on designing systems that make economic opportunity more visible, accessible, and scalable.
Expanding Access to Capital
Kasali is the founder of EmpowerHer Capital, an initiative focused on expanding access to capital, mentorship, and operational infrastructure for women-led enterprises.
The platform works to support entrepreneurs who often operate outside traditional financial networks despite demonstrating strong growth potential.
Rather than approaching development through isolated grants or short-term aid, EmpowerHer Capital is designed to strengthen the broader ecosystem that allows entrepreneurs to grow. By connecting catalytic funding with mentorship, operational support, and institutional partnerships, the initiative aims to help promising businesses transition from informal activity into scalable enterprises.
Early pilot programs have already shown measurable impact. Participating businesses reported average revenue increases of approximately 40 percent, alongside meaningful improvements in financial stability and operational capacity.
For Kasali, the long-term objective is not simply funding individual businesses but building systems capable of connecting overlooked entrepreneurial talent with larger pools of institutional capital.
“Entrepreneurship already exists,” he says. “What’s missing in many cases is the infrastructure that allows capital to reach it halfway.”
Preparing the Next Digital Workforce
Alongside his work on capital access, Kasali founded the CyberSafe Youth Initiative, a nonprofit focused on digital inclusion and workforce readiness across underserved communities.
Since its launch, the initiative has trained more than 5,000 students across the United States and Africa, with approximately 60 percent female participation across its programs.
The organization focuses on digital literacy, cybersecurity awareness, and pathways into technology careers. Building on this foundation, Kasali launched the CyberBridge Initiative, a $1.2 million, three-year public-private initiative aimed at expanding digital workforce pipelines through coordinated partnerships between telecommunications providers, technology firms, educational institutions, and development organizations.
The initiative is designed to reach more than 50,000 learners through roughly 100 digital training hubs, connecting students directly with technical training, mentorship opportunities, and internship pipelines into the technology sector.
Through partnerships with organizations including Cisco, Net Impact, and leading technology companies, CyberBridge aims to transform digital access into long-term economic mobility.
As artificial intelligence and automation reshape the global labor market, Kasali believes workforce inclusion will determine whether technological change widens or reduces inequality.
“Inclusion has to be a competitive advantage, not an afterthought,” he said during the World Bank discussion on AI and the future of work.
Solving the “Missing Middle”
During the same discussion, Kasali also addressed another structural challenge facing innovation ecosystems: the financing gap confronting early-stage companies in emerging sectors such as digital agriculture.
Technology platforms are increasingly transforming agricultural productivity through tools such as mobile advisory services, satellite monitoring, and digital marketplaces. Yet many of the startups building these solutions struggle to access the capital required to scale.
“Many promising digital agricultural startups face a structural financing gap,” Kasali explained. “They are often too small for traditional bank lending, too early-stage for venture capital, and too operational for grant-only funding.”
This structural constraint, often referred to by development economists as the “missing middle,” leaves a large number of potentially transformative companies without access to appropriate forms of financing.
Addressing this gap will require new financing mechanisms capable of bridging early-stage innovation with larger pools of institutional capital.
“If we want technology to transform sectors like agriculture,” Kasali noted, “we need financial systems that evolve alongside the businesses they are meant to support.”
Bridging Finance, Technology, and Development
Kasali’s work is informed not only by development initiatives but also by experience within global financial markets, including investment banking and economic research.
This exposure has shaped his broader perspective on how capital markets intersect with entrepreneurship and development.
Global capital markets move trillions of dollars each year, yet only a small fraction of those flows reach early-stage entrepreneurs and innovation ecosystems in underserved markets.
Kasali believes the opportunity ahead lies in designing institutions and financial structures capable of bridging that gap.
“The future of development will depend less on programmatic interventions and more on the ecosystems we build to connect capital, technology, and talent,” he says.
A Systems Approach to Opportunity
As economic systems become increasingly interconnected, the leaders shaping the future of development may be those capable of operating across sectors — finance, technology, and public institutions alike.
Kasali’s work reflects this emerging model.
From building digital workforce pipelines to expanding access to capital and engaging in global policy conversations, his initiatives share a common objective: ensuring that talent is not limited by structural barriers to opportunity.
“The central challenge of economic development,” he says, “is whether our systems allow opportunity to move as quickly as talent.”
