Across the world today, there are an estimated 1.2 billion young people aged 15-24 – accounting for one out of every six people globally. Nowhere is this more relevant than in Africa, the world’s youngest and fastest-growing continent. For Africa’s labour markets, this ‘youth bulge’ simultaneously presents an opportunity and a challenge: a growing share of the working-age population could lead to a boost in productivity and growth for African economies; but this is contingent on labour markets accommodating these growing numbers of youth putting intense pressure on systems that are often already struggling to keep up. Action must be taken to ensure that there are sustainable and transformative approaches which allow this growing population of young African women and men to have access to decent and dignified employment opportunities.
One approach that can lead to sustainable and transformative impact at scale, which has been used across various economic sectors in international development by different donors, is market systems development (MSD) approach. That’s why the ILO Lab and the Mastercard Foundation joined forces to explore how this approach can address the challenge of decent work for Africa’s youth.
Together, we sought to:
- Understand the different pathways and experiences of market systems development (MSD) programmes in labour market to address youth employment;
- Draw lessons from these programmes on successful delivery, with a focus on what is specific for youth; and
- More broadly, ask how useful the MSD approach is for addressing the challenge of youth employment in sub-Saharan Africa.
Six key learnings emerged from our research, relating to the design and implementation of youth-oriented programmes:
Read the rest of the blog post here: https://www.marketlinks.org/resources/can-systems-approach-create-more-and-better-jobs-africas-youth.