trained are able to collectively engage in, and productively contribute to, one of Sudan’s leading industries. Focusing on improving the quality of and access to agricultural jobs in Sudan’s rural areas should also reduce the strain on Sudan’s urban labor markets, which have not been able to absorb the influx of rural women and youth seeking employment, resulting in an increase in urban poverty. In addition to creating jobs and reducing poverty, the above-described approach would also provide a productive link between social protection and women’s and youth’s economic empowerment.

# **_Combine efforts to build human capital with activities aimed at strengthening agency_**

It is important to promote gender equality from a young age, tracking disparities in human capital accumulation by ensuring that, among other things, girls and young women complete their education. As presented in this report, enrollment rates have increased in Sudan for both boys and girls and, in fact, reached gender parity in primary and secondary education in 2017 (World Bank Gender Statistics). However, these are still below the average of Sub-Saharan Africa countries at the primary and secondary levels and girls in rural areas are less likely to be enrolled especially in primary school.

This report has identified early marriage as an important reason that girls drop out of school and there are various interventions that could be considered to delay marriage and support girls who marry early. Based on a review of what works to end child marriage, such interventions could include (a) empowering girls with information, skills, and support networks; (b) educating and mobilizing parents and community members; (c) enhancing the accessibility and quality of formal schooling for girls; (d) offering economic support and incentives for girls and their families; and (e) fostering an enabling legal and policy framework (Wodon et al. 2017). Programs to educate girls and their parents about the negative impacts of this would be useful. Curbing early marriage and pregnancy will also help reduce the fertility rate, and subsequently the dependency ratio, with a positive impact on poverty.

Given that social norms related to the caregiver versus provider role seem to be strongly internalized, it will be important to identify ways to address girls’ limited agency in determining their future—education and marriage—and to strengthen their bargaining power within their households and the larger community. Behavioral science-informed community-level interventions to address social norms that restrict women’s agency related to education and economic activity can be explored, with activities that target husbands, parents, and/or other community members (World Bank 2018a). For example, this report noted that, while recent data suggest that roughly comparable numbers of young women and young men are enrolling in tertiary education, the prevailing perception is that higher education is more important for men. Until this perception is changed, Sudan is unlikely to see the ‘return on investment’ of its female university graduates, which negatively affects not only those graduates but also the country’s GDP. In the nearer term, actions could be taken to (a) reduce school dropouts for girls at all levels, and provide dropouts with opportunities to complete their educations to some degree of certification through alternative mechanisms such as traditional correspondence programs or contemporary online programs; (b) improve girls’ enrollment at the secondary level; and (c) target young women for school-to-work transition programs that take into account their individual realities such as rural versus urban, married versus unmarried, some primary school education versus higher education, and so on. Evidence shows that a multipronged approach related to life-skills and livelihood training may be most effective in 56