Published on Africa Can End Poverty

A ladder of opportunity: unlocking jobs for today’s African youth

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A ladder of opportunity: unlocking jobs for today’s African youth A social safety net beneficiary in front of her retail business, Togo. Credit: Christophe Mawunou

Sub-Saharan Africa is undergoing a demographic transition of global proportion. By 2050, the region’s population is set to grow from 1.5 billion in 2024 to 2.5 billion, with more than 600 million people joining the working-age population. By then, one in three individuals aged 15-34 globally will be African. This provides an enormous opportunity for the continent to reap the demographic dividend of higher economic growth propelled by an expanding population. That is, however, only if this expanding population can find productive employment opportunities. Jobs are the pathway to prosperity. And yet, this is the crux: while Sub-Saharan Africa needs to create 15 million jobs each year to keep up, its economies create far fewer and are often poorly remunerated. 

Today, many youths are idle, nor neither in education, employment, or training (NEET). Adolescent girls specifically are too often dropping out of school due to early marriage or childbearing. There is real urgency.
 

Many shades of idleness: Share of youth not in education, employment, or training
(% of youth population)

Share of youth not in education, employment, or training International Labour Organization. “Labour Force Statistics database (LFS)” ILOSTAT. Accessed June 18, 2024. https://ilostat.ilo.org/data/

 

World Bank Group President Ajay Banga has called for building “a ladder of opportunity” for young people in developing countries, where each rung represents a step towards better jobs and greater empowerment. This is an appealing people-focused framework to think through what it takes to boost job opportunities at scale and quickly. It recognizes that the path to inclusive growth in Africa lies in the generation of higher-quality jobs, with higher labor earnings being the main driver of poverty reduction. Solving this challenge in Africa requires a multi-pronged strategy, from increased wage employment in today’s often small formal private sector to increased productivity in self-employment and micro-enterprises in Africa’s vast informal sector. Managed migration programs can also enhance productive labor mobility within countries and internationally, including towards fast-aging economies

Onto the ladder and up…

For young people to climb the ladder of opportunity, they must first get on it. Extreme poverty and food insecurity often prevent this initial step. Across Africa, social protection programs have proven effective in helping the poor onto the ladder by ensuring that food is on the table, children can access education and health services – key for building a strong workforce for tomorrow – and households can invest in productive assets like livestock or stands for street vending. Social protection also offers a safety net to those who fall off the ladder in the face of shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic or increasingly severe and frequent climate events. 

Over the past two decades, Africa has pioneered “productive” social protection programs, starting  with the flagship Ethiopia Productive Safety Net. These initiatives now go beyond income support, incorporating public works employment that promote climate mitigation and resilience, engaging beneficiaries in entrepreneurship and life skills training, opening bank accounts, and promoting group savings schemes in addition to income support. Programs like Senegal’s urban Yokk Koom Koom program, Ghana’s Productive Safety Net Program, and Zambia's Supporting Women's Livelihoods program, have significantly boosted household revenues and savings. These programs are particularly successful among women who often self-select as the entrepreneurial dynamo in the household.

Youth employment programs are expanding to support African Youth in finding meaningful work. For example, Kenya’s Youth Employment and Opportunities program (KYEOP) has helped 155,000 young people launch 86,000 businesses, create 125,000 jobs, and increase incomes by 50%. Building on this success, Kenya’s new National Youth Opportunities Towards Advancement (NYOTA) aims to reach 800,000 youth, addressing 35 percent of inactive, unemployed, or low paid young people aged 18-29.

Benin’s Azôli program (which means “path to employment”) similarly supports youth with job training, placement services, and entrepreneurship support. These programs demonstrate that scaling such efforts can significantly impact youth employment, creating pathways to economic inclusion and resilience.

…and scaling the ladder

For the ladder of opportunity to support millions of aspiring workers, governments need to invest in robust systems. Digital social registries of poor and vulnerable households, underpinned by identification systems, are the platform for targeting support to those most in need. Digital government-to-person (G2P) payment systems can be used to transfer income support or start-up grants to beneficiaries and serve as an entry to access finance. Labor market systems are critical to allow programs to scale. Senegal is building a system of informal apprenticeships with a formal validation of acquired competencies, delivering credentials to youth trained by informal businesses. Benin’s national employment agency plays a key role in matching young job seekers to employment opportunities in the expanding private sector such as textiles in the Glo-Djigbé Industrial Zone.

Realizing Africa’s demographic dividend by 2050 requires dynamic private sector development to create productive jobs.  For the private sector to invest and create jobs, reforms need to be prioritized to enhance the business environment, boost market access, attract investment, and improve trade as well as sector and firm performance. At the same time, education and skills development systems must prepare the workforce for the demands of a growing formal private sector. While some of these reforms will take time to deliver results, scaling youth employment programs can deliver immediate results, helping millions onto the ladder of opportunity.

The urgency is real, but so is the opportunity. With the right investments and partnerships, Africa’s youth can climb the ladder of opportunity—and drive the continent toward a brighter future.


Christian Bodewig

Practice Manager, Social Protection and Jobs, West and Central Africa, World Bank

Camilla Holmemo

Practice Manager for Social Protection and Jobs

Suleiman Namara

Practice Manager for Social Protection and Jobs

Robert S. Chase

Practice Manager, Practice Manager for Social Protection and Jobs

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