Africa’s young population is often described as a demographic dividend: a potential economic advantage if young people can gain the skills and jobs needed to contribute productively. But for many young people, that promise is slipping away. They leave school or training and enter labour markets where formal jobs are scarce and public programmes too often miss the people who need them most.
Too many programmes are underfunded, weakly targeted and disconnected from employers.
Drawing on more than three decades of applied economics and policy research, with particular expertise in labour markets, public finance, policy evaluation and youth employment programmes in Africa, I recently co-edited a book called Youth Employment Programmes in Africa. The book uses evidence from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda to show that these programmes cannot succeed as stand-alone projects. They also need to be:
linked to real labour demand
backed by adequate public resources
