African Youth and the Labour Market: Training for What?

The growth of African education systems over the past two decades is undeniable. Enrolment rates have risen, universities have multiplied, and the number of graduates has kept increasing.

According to the World Bank, up to 12 million young people will enter the labour market in Sub-Saharan Africa each year by 2050 — for only 3 million wage jobs created annually. This structural imbalance is not a distant projection. It is already a reality for millions of young graduates who leave African universities with no job waiting for them.

Between 7 and 10 million young people join the labour market in Sub-Saharan Africa every year. Barely 10% of them find a job that truly matches their skills. This persistent gap between the training on offer and the actual needs of African economies is not a passing, cyclical problem. It is the symptom of an educational model that, in its deep design, has not yet changed.

Inherited model, new realities

The education systems of French-speaking Africa were largely built on a model designed to feed a centralised public sector and Fordist economies — two realities that no longer structure the labour market of the 21st century. The training on offer only partially meets companies' skills needs, and technical and vocational tracks remain few in number and insufficiently developed.

The predominance of general tracks, the limited involvement of the private sector in defining teaching content, and the almost systematic absence of entrepreneurship education are all structural gaps. Meanwhile, the informal economy continues to expand, absorbing a growing share of young workers — particularly women and young people in rural areas — in precarious working conditions with no prospects of progression.

One young African in four is today confined to precarious work that does not allow them to durably improve their economic situation. This figure illustrates the scale of a challenge that goes far beyond the question of access to education and raises that of its purpose.

What the market demands, what school ignores

African companies — whether in services, digital, agribusiness or crafts — are not looking for diplomas. They are looking for skills: the ability to solve a problem, mastery of a tool, a sense of initiative, the ability to work in a team. Qualities that university benches, in their current format, do not develop enough.

In Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal and Ghana, the observation is similar: promising sectors struggle to recruit operational profiles, while thousands of graduates wait for an opportunity that does not match their training. Companies create few jobs because of the high cost of intermediaries and rigid regulations. Low skill levels among young people and unsuitable vocational training aggravate the situation.

Rethinking the system from the root

Faced with this diagnosis, marginal adjustments will not be enough. What is at stake is a deep overhaul of curricula — not to modernise them superficially, but to rebuild them from the economic, cultural and social realities of the African continent. Programmes designed for and by Africa, no longer inherited from foreign frameworks that no longer match the needs on the ground.

This overhaul cannot be done without the private sector. Not as a mere host for interns, but as a co-architect of training programmes. Companies know better than anyone the skills they need today and those they will look for tomorrow. Systematically involving them in the design of curricula — alongside states, academic institutions and development partners — is a necessary condition for training to stop being disconnected from the market. It also requires a clear incentive framework: tax benefits, co-financing mechanisms, and institutional recognition of their educational contribution.

Moreover, exposure to the professional world must not wait for high school or university. Career talks and meetings, held regularly from primary school, would allow children to discover concretely the diversity of occupations, their daily realities and the skills they call on. This is not about anecdotal visits, but about a structured, progressive educational system designed to anchor, from childhood, a culture of work, effort and professional projection. Several Asian and European countries have integrated this type of approach with convincing results on guidance and school motivation.

Finally — and this is perhaps the most underestimated lever — extracurricular activities must become a full pillar of the educational path, compulsory from nursery school. Sport, arts, manual activities, public speaking, group projects: these spaces are not optional extras. They are privileged observation grounds where children's natural talents reveal themselves long before school grades shed light on them. Institutionalising these activities and training supervisors to identify aptitudes would make it possible to nourish truly personalised guidance, based on each child's real potential rather than on academic performance alone.

Work-study from secondary school: an underused lever

Among the available responses, work-study training (alternance) is among the best documented and most proven. This model, which combines theoretical training in an institution with practical immersion in a company, has existed for more than a century in some countries and continues to prove itself internationally. Germany offers the best-known illustration, with a dual system integrated from secondary school that structurally contributes to low youth unemployment rates.

Morocco is beginning a transition in this direction. Partnerships between public grandes écoles and companies have allowed the launch of work-study tracks, with time divided between academic training and the workplace, accompanied by pay and hiring prospects. The experience is instructive, but it also reveals the limits inherent in any large-scale rollout: the absence of sufficient state incentives and the limited capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises to engage, even though they make up the bulk of the productive fabric.

In French-speaking Sub-Saharan Africa, work-study remains only marginally integrated into initial training paths, often relegated to short vocational training schemes. Extending this model from secondary school — positioning it not as a track of relegation, but as a valued route to professionalisation — would be a significant lever of transformation. A young person exposed to the professional world during their training develops not only technical skills, but also an ability to make informed choices that no counselling programme can fully replace.

Mentoring: institutionalising human support

Career guidance in French-speaking Africa remains one of the most persistent blind spots of education policy. It is often treated as an administrative formality — a form, a test, a list of tracks — rather than as a continuous, personalised process of support.

Mentoring is, in this respect, a complementary lever to curriculum reform. A professional mentor — rooted in a sector's reality, willing to share their journey and networks — offers a young person something that no formal programme can fully provide: an embodied reading of the world of work, and a model of a possible path.

In Africa, the transmission of knowledge between generations is a value deeply rooted in the continent's cultures — from the concept of ubuntu in Southern Africa to the philosophy of harambee in East Africa, by way of the traditions of intergenerational solidarity in West and Central Africa. Institutionalising professional mentoring means relying on an existing cultural foundation to serve a concrete development goal. This approach deserves to be formalised, recognised and supported in high schools, universities and the integration programmes run by states and their partners.

Real efforts, a systemic coherence still to be built

Positive dynamics are at work. Reforms of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) are progressing in several countries of the region. Development partners — AFD, the World Bank, GPE — are devoting growing resources to it. Public-private partnerships are beginning to emerge to better align the training on offer with real market needs.

These advances are real. They nevertheless remain too often fragmented, driven by project logic rather than by coherent national strategies linking education, employment and economic development. The sustainability of education reforms requires sovereign ownership by states, beyond cycles of external funding.

Towards an education rooted in African realities

Answering the question — diplomas, but for what future? — requires repositioning education not as an end in itself, but as an instrument serving a clearly defined development project. It begins in nursery school, with the observation and development of talents. It is built in primary school, through early, structured exposure to occupations. It is consolidated in secondary and higher education, through curricula rethought with the private sector, valued work-study schemes and mentoring support.

Africa has an exceptional demographic asset. Its youth is both its most pressing challenge and its most precious resource. Giving it the right tools — training rooted in reality, early professional experiences, and mentoring figures — is not only a question of fairness. It is a condition for development.

Sonia Beguide

Sources

1. International Labour Organization (ILO) — Africa employment report (Re-Africa): Meeting the youth employment challenge. ILO, Geneva. https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---africa/---ro-abidjan/documents/publication/wcms_761156.pdf

2. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung — The employment situation in Sub-Saharan Africa (in French). FES, 2022. https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/19049.pdf

3. Euractiv FR — "Unemployment also affects young people in Africa" (in French). https://euractiv.fr/news/le-chomage-touche-aussi-les-jeunes-en-afrique/

4. Pères Blancs — "African youth unemployment" (in French). https://www.peresblancs.org/chomage_jeunes_africains.htm

5. L'Economiste Campus (Morocco) — "Grandes écoles move into work-study training" (in French). July 2024. https://campus.leconomiste.com/blog/2024/07/08/les-grandes-ecoles-se-lancent-dans-la-formation-par-alternance/

6. Agence Ecofin — "South Africa: youth unemployment rate rises to 62.4% in Q1 2025" (in French). May 2025. https://www.agenceecofin.com/actualites/1505-128372

7. World Bank — Unemployment data for Sub-Saharan Africa. https://donnees.banquemondiale.org