The problem we seek to solve

Africa faces a youth unemployment crisis, with 50% of the world’s youth unemployed, as well as broader economic crises. This crisis is compounded by the existential threats of the climate crisis, a changing world of work, and growing inequality, in a continent in which few people are employed formally. Yet, youth unemployment is typically seen as a problem to be solved through skills and education interventions.

Our cutting-edge research shows that this overly simplified view and the plethora of interventions based on it will continue to fail. We argue that skill formation, including all education, training, and skills development in preparation for work, should not be treated as a standalone system but as part of a country's social and economic institutions, including its industrialisation trajectory, and labour markets, and broader socio-economic and cultural factors.

Key to the common misidentification of the core problems associated with youth unemployment and the transition from education to work is a massive gap in research in the developing world on this complex set of moving parts. Our research shows that policies that treat skills as exogenous to the economy end up producing layers of complex and expensive regulatory institutions, often formulated in the developed world. Further, they are trapped in the analysis of existing jobs and existing labour markets and notions of skills demand. Many institutions have been implemented in the developing world to solve the ‘education problem’ but have created additional sets of problems. We currently do not know enough about the levers of change that will improve skills formation ecosystems for work for the common good. Policymakers in the developing world are making policy in the dark.