Washington, January 27, 2014 With more than half of Sub-Saharan Africa's population now
under the age of 25, and as many as 11 million young Africans expected to join
the labor market every year for the next decade, creating millions of
productive, well-paying jobs will be vital to boost economic growth,
significantly cut poverty, and create shared prosperity in Africa, according to
a new World Bank report on youth employment in Africa.
While many African economies
have registered impressive economic growth in recent years, poverty levels
across the region have not fallen as much as expected and young people looking
for better-paying work have been at a great disadvantage. This is partly
because many African countries rely heavily on oil, gas, and mineral extraction
which boosts economic growth but does little to create new jobs for the region
s fast-growing youth population or reduce overall rates of poverty.
In a new comprehensive
regional report on the subject, Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa notes
that close to 80 percent of the workforce will continue to work on small farms
and in household businesses in the near future. While the modern wage sector is
growing very fast in some countries, it cannot create enough jobs to meet the
youth employment challenge now preoccupying governments in every corner of the
continent.
