DANIDA Development Days

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DANIDA Development Days

• Workshop on Employment and Labour Markets in
  Africa
• Private Sector Collaboration for Youth
  Employment in West Africa
• By Markus Pilgrim, Youth Employment Network

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1. Who we are?

• YEN is an interagency partnership between the UN,
  the ILO and the World Bank
• As a network we focus on
• Policy advice
• Knowledge sharing
• Capacity building for youth organizations

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2. What is the challenge in West Africa?

• 65 of 260 million people in West Africa are
  below the age of 30
• Youth unemployment rates are high (20) but do
  not tell the full story of invisible
  underemployment
• 50 of all employed youth live on less than USD 1
  a day
• Between 65 and 90 of urban youth make less than
  minimum hourly wage (adults 30 to 50)
• The informal sector is the most important job
  creator (95 of all new jobs in the case of
  Senegal)

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3. Why to intervene?

• Youth face special barriers to employment
  (information cost)
• Unemployment early in working life increases
  probability of future joblessness
• High social cost social unrest and security
  problem

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4. How to intervene? Policy vs. project approach

• Getting the framework right is crucial
• M Macroeconomic policies
• I Investment climate, infrastructure
• L Labour market institutions and regulations
• E Education and skills
• S Social protection
• Why projects?
• Labour markets take time to react
• Pilots on a project basis are needed to test new
  approaches, but rigorous evaluation is needed
• Politicians request projects, they need guidance
  on what works and does not cost too much

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What YEN does

• Selection and documentation of eleven good
  practice examples of private sector collaboration
  for youth employment
• The objective is to facilitate replication and up
  scaling
• Three types of projects
• Employability (Labour supply) training
• Matching school to work transition
• Employment opportunities (Labour demand)
  promotion of young entrepreneurs and linkages

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6. Case study I Promise program of Synapse
Centre in Dakar

• Objective
• create young business leaders through a 14-month
  entrepreneurship and mentoring program
  complemented by an incubator
• Results
• first class graduated (17 potential
  entrepreneurs)
• 9 participants created enterprises, the others
  found employment
• Strengths Weaknesses
• Cost effective - limited scalability because
  of lack of
• (project cost USD 80.000) mentors
• Integrated approach - elitist
• Selective - no access to finance
• Created business clubs in schools
• to raise awareness

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7. Case study II CISCO Networking Academies
West Africa (Partners CISCO, UNDP, USAID)

• Objective
• Train IT specialist
• Results
• 125 academies established in West Africa
• Presently 9.200 students enrolled
• 65 of all graduates found jobs
• 20 established their own enterprise
• 1/3 of graduates are women
• Strengths Weaknesses
• Wide outreach - concentrated in urban areas
• Meeting demand of labour market - weak IT
  infrastructure (connectivity)
• Fee-based training, but reduced
• fees for the unemployed and girls
• Graduates take the same examination
• as in other parts of the world

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8. Where we need support

• Benchmarking on youth employment on policy and
  project level
• Competitive grant scheme for youth NGOs in Africa