PRESS RELEASE: NEPAD Agency joins ILO’s Global Initiative on Decent Jobs for Youth
Johannesburg, South Africa, August 22, 2018 – NEPAD Agency, the implementing body of the African Union, is the latest organisation to join the ILO led Global Initiative on Decent Jobs for Youth.
Launched in 2016 by the executive heads of the UN, Decent Jobs for Youth is the global initiative to tackle the youth employment crisis and to ensure that young people have access to decent work in line with the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
NEPAD’s move to join Decent Jobs for Youth comes together with its important commitment to train 15,000 African youth and women along strategic agricultural value chains over three years. With a focus on disadvantaged young women in the rural economy, this new effort is led by NEPAD’s Skills and Employment for Youth Programme, which relies on AU/NEPAD policy frameworks to support national development policy planning and the engagement with the private sector across four key pillars: employment creation, skills and employability, and entrepreneurship and small enterprise development.
NEPAD’s contribution to Decent Jobs for Youth is also aligned to the African Union’s Agenda 2063: ‘The Africa We Want’, which seeks to develop skills and youth entrepreneurship for job creation, especially in rural areas.
Within Decent Jobs for Youth, the NEPAD Agency’s contribution will be underpinned by three objectives:
1) Contribute to building alliances in Africa and concomitantly scale up action and share and apply knowledge about what works on youth employment.
2) Effectively rally for increased political attention and action on job creation for youth, as well as catalyse policy alignment and attract increased investment in pursuit of a structural transformation to boost youth labour demand in Africa.
3) Offer opportunities for young people to build desired skills and enhance their employability into a globally competitive and rapidly modernising labour market.
The collaboration between the NEPAD Agency, ILO and partners of Decent Jobs for Youth aims to boost action around green jobs for youth.
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