“In most countries in the world, youth employment is at least twice the percentage of the overall unemployment rate. More importantly, the data show that if a young person is unemployed for more than a year, it affects the trajectory over their life course…The youth population in Africa in the next 30 years is going to grow from 200 million to 400 million. That’s a recipe for economic opportunity or for real social unrest, and we’ve got to get ahead of it.”
Impacting One Million Lives in Africa
The current pace of job creation in Africa cannot meet the demands of the world’s fastest growing youth population.
Digital Jobs Africa aims to impact 1 million lives in six countries in Africa by catalyzing sustainable Information Communication Technology-enabled (ICT) employment opportunities and skills training for high potential but disadvantaged African youth, thereby generating social and economic opportunities for those employed, their families and communities.
The Foundation will work in close partnership with other stakeholders – private sector, government, civil society and the development community – to leverage significant funds and align complementary programs in order to achieve the impact goal.
Our Strategy
Digital Jobs Africa will seize the opportunity presented by the youth bulge in Africa and the phenomenal rise of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector to bring about sustainable impact, through job creation. To achieve its goal, Digital Jobs Africa will focus on three targeted interventions:
• Grow the Impact Sourcing sector by encouraging and enabling the private sector to incorporate the practice into their business model and identify other digital job opportunities beyond Impact Sourcing
• Skills development and training to prepare young people for digital jobs such as data entry, service center support, online research, tagging audio and video files, and learning Android and iOS platforms
• Support an enabling environment for digital jobs
Key Outcomes
Digital Jobs Africa will seek to:
• Impact 1 million lives in six countries in Africa
• Generate greater social and economic benefits for youth, their families, and their communities
• Increase demand for African youth in the workforce
• Create an enabling environment for digital jobs
The International Labor Organization in Skills For Employment Policy Brief: Increasing The Employability Of Disadvantaged Youth defines disadvantaged as “not just to economic factors, such as income poverty, or lack of experience in and poor understanding of the formal job market, but also social factors such as gender, racial, ethnic or migrant background, and geographical isolation with poor access to quality education and job opportunities.” Most of the direct beneficiaries of this work will probably be within the narrow World Bank definition of youth, i.e. ages 15 to 24. However, we recognize that many stakeholders in Africa capture the adjacent age group of 26 to 35 in their characterization of youth. We will start with the broader definition to reflect the usage in Africa, but will review that as we learn more during the initiative.
Countries
Digital Jobs Africa will focus on six African countries where the Foundation believes our efforts will have the greatest impact— Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa.
Egypt has the second largest service sector in Africa—$250 billion—comprising nearly half of the Egyptian economy for output and employment. Egypt has been ranked very high as a promising BPO market.
Ghana’s service sector has grown rapidly over the past decade—now representing over 50% of the country’s GDP. Ghana is rated highly as an attractive Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) location by the AT Kearney index for attractive BPO locations, and is promising for the growth of the Impact Sourcing sector.
Kenya has a track-record of yielding ground-breaking innovations such as MPESA a mobile money transfer service which employs over 50,000 people. Kenya is the regional hub for trade and finance and has largest service sector in East Africa which has added 500,000 jobs since 2005.
Morocco has one of the largest service sectors in Africa, representing over half of the country’s overall GDP, and employing around 40% of the labor force. Already a well-established BPO destination, there is an opportunity to expand this work to include Impact Sourcing.
Nigeria is home to 50% of Africa’s largest corporations, and is now the second largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa. With an economy that is expected to surpass South Africa as the largest during the next decade, Nigeria already has a strong service sector – making up about 30% of the country’s overall outputs.
South Africa is the largest and most well developed economy in Africa—home to many large corporations and a GDP of over $560 billion. South Africa has the largest service sector in the continent, and represents one of the largest markets for Impact Sourcing in the world today.
For more information about Digital Jobs Africa, visit
http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/our-work/current-work/digital-jobs-africa
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