Aligning Youth Skills and the Labour Market in Africa
by Sara Cohen, Head of Learning at M-Shule
The Problem
It is a widely known fact that upwards of 60% of Africa’s population is below 25 years of age, giving Africa the title of World’s Youngest Continent. It is also commonly understood that developing economies need to focus on reskilling and upskilling their workforce in order to be competitive on the world stage and to measurably decrease unemployment rates.
But, as we highlighted in last month’s blog post on refugees, reskilling and upskilling requires access to high-quality, adaptive, personalised learning opportunities, which have been made scarce by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The innovative and creative nature of young people makes them particularly well-suited to address the myriad development challenges faced throughout the continent. Despite being considered one of the continent’s greatest untapped resources, the “mismatch between youth skills and labour market expectations makes it challenging for young people to succeed in the world of work”.
These lesser-known facts about the youth skills gap and concomitant unemployment in Africa highlight the challenges posed by its burgeoning youth population:
- 16 million young African adults are unemployed or facing imminent unemployment
- While Africa generates approximately 3.7 million jobs per annum, more than 11 million young people join African labour markets on an annual basis.
- Informal employment across Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 89% of total employment, leaving the vast majority of working youth without employment rights or safety nets of any kind.
- Only 40% of young people who complete a technical or vocational course join Kenya’s labour market, and the majority of TVET graduates struggle to obtain and create jobs.
M-Shule’s Solution
Evidence from developing countries has shown that a holistic approach to skills development is essential for closing Africa’s skills-labour market mismatch. In order for youth to engage in productive, dignified employment and improve their life trajectories, they need to develop a variety of skills, including academic, technical or vocational, social, emotional, and psychological skills. This approach is especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic, as young people are forced to contend with disruptions to their learning trajectories and a host of other complications stemming from the pandemic.
Having the only platform in Africa which combines the “appropriate technology” of text messages with personalized training, peer learning, and community sensitization, M-Shule is able to provide a holistic range of skill-building opportunities for all young people. Using our adaptive learning technology, we have developed bite-sized lessons across a variety of relevant topics, all accessible via SMS. M-Shule’s system automatically tailors courses based on the learners’ needs, interests, language, and performance and tracks real-time data on their progress.
CASE STUDY: BUILDING LIVELIHOODS
In 2020, M-Shule partnered with a world-renowned INGO to provide vital skills for their youth beneficiaries across Kenya. Due to COVID-19 and social distancing restrictions, this organisation had to find innovative ways to continue engaging community members in capacity-building activities while managing the impacts of COVID-19 on their programmes. Together with M-Shule and using digital technology already familiar to the users, the organisation piloted SMS micro-courses on life skills, career guidance, entrepreneurship, social accountability, financial literacy and business plan development.
Through this project, 552 young people from 19 different counties across Kenya used accessible technology and relatable, localized scenarios across 120 lessons to improve their community’s skills, abilities and confidence to improve their own livelihoods. The learners also demonstrated that they want to and are able to learn using SMS and then engage in peer learning by sharing their learnings with other members of their community.
Furthermore, M-Shule and the organization worked collaboratively throughout the key phases of the project to ensure that the project was not only a success, but that it was built to be easily replicable, scalable and sustainable.
“I learned that I should believe in myself and have a high self-esteem,” — A participant in this intervention
M-Shule has continued to successfully leverage its innovative design-thinking approach in order to create, adapt, and deliver accessible, tailored, and impactful SMS training programs for young people. These programs have been translated into 8 different languages and delivered to more than 20,000 households across Kenya. By working with 4 different organisations, we have helped young people build academic and socioemotional skills, gain access to reading material, become financially literate, start up small businesses, learn about career options and participate meaningfully in civic life.
CASE STUDY: STEM EDUCATION
M-Shule’s newest venture involves working alongside a unique initiative that gives young people from across Kenya an opportunity to demonstrate innovation and showcase their scientific talents through a National Science and Technology competition. This organisation is based on the premise that a wealth of talent and potential for innovation exists among Kenyan youth and that by providing a platform for them to compete and showcase their own practical solutions to the problems faced within their communities, they can be encouraged to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
One of the core pillars of this organisation is their outreach program, in which mentors meet up with students from different counties to talk about STEM as well as look at their different experiments and projects. However, with COVID-19 rendering the school calendars unpredictable and mentor visits impossible, the organisation needed to find a new way to engage with secondary school learners and teachers.
This intervention, which is currently in progress, is delivering the organisation’s content through SMS. In this pilot stage, 60 secondary school learners will have access to 20 lessons that provide valuable information on selected STEM careers, including Engineering, Nursing and Medicine.
“For one to become an engineer, he/she must have passion and also do well in school. There must be that inner push within yourself. There was a time when an idea struck in my mind and realized I indeed needed Physics. That is when I started growing the passion.” — A participant in this intervention
Let’s close Africa’s youth skills gap together!
By working together, we can continue to discover innovative ways to close the youth skills-labour market gap. Do you have amazing content we can digitize and make available to young people across the continent? Would collecting qualitative and quantitative data from your youth beneficiaries allow you to better equip them with the most relevant and market-aligned skills? Have you got a great idea for building the socioemotional skills of young adults?
