Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges, Constraints and Opportunities

African demographics, economic structure, politics and globalisation trends combine into a perfect storm for policy makers

Abstract

African demographics, economic structure, politics and globalisation trends combine into a perfect storm for Africa’s policy makers. The large cohort of youth entering Africa’s labour force is the best educated one the continent has seen, and Africa is witnessing its best growth performance in decades; yet jobs remain elusive in the formal wage sector. This is largely because African economies have hitherto failed to transform structurally from low productivity agriculture to higher productivity non-agricultural sectors and this, taken together with the high fertility and low infant mortality, has resulted in the structure of employment not changing much.

This is an output from the ‘Delivering Inclusive Financial Development and Growth’ project

Citation

Louise Fox, Lemma W. Senbet, Witness Simbanegavi; Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges, Constraints and Opportunities, Journal of African Economies, Volume 25, Issue suppl_1, 1 March 2016, Pages i3–i15

Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges, Constraints and Opportunities

Updates to this page

Published 27 January 2016