Africa's Got Work To Do: A Diagnostic of Youth Employment Challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is not only the poorest region of the world, it is also the youngest. This realisation is fuelling concern about the youth employment challenge. However, these discussions often lack context, owing to the absence of labour market data and analysis. This article remedies that gap through an analysis of the macroeconomics of the youth employment problem in the low and lower middle income countries of SSA. This analysis concludes that the youth employment problem is just a subset of the overall employment challenges in SSA, which stem from the sluggish pace of the demographic transition--which is why so many youth are coming into the labour market in the first place--combined with slow development of a modern, export-oriented enterprise sector, which leaves the majority of youth entering the labour force no employment option except household farms and firms. In these segments, earnings and productivity are usually low. This has resulted in a large gap between...