Johannesburg, South Africa, November 10, 2021 - There has never been a more crucial time for Africa to create jobs for its burgeoning population than now; when 200 million people are between the ages of 15 and 24 and 60 percent of the unemployed are youth. In two days of talks, workshops and best-practice learning exchanges, the recent virtual Africa Creates Jobs 2021 (ACJ!2021) conference focused on driving a responsive and agile skills and jobs agenda for economic growth in Africa.

In bringing together over 700 participants from across the African Union member states, including high-level government representatives, Regional Economic Communities, business, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET), skills development practitioners, and young people, the conference aimed to create an open dialogue between all stakeholders in the ecosystem.

Member states of the African Union continue to wrestle with how to bring about tangible results in the development and growth of their economies, both individually and collectively. While many drivers of change, including demographic changes, globalisation, and trade, digitalisation, technological changes, climate change, offer prospects to accelerate economic development, several challenges faced African economies before COVID19, including a growing youth population, limited access to international markets, low productivity, technology gaps, low investment rates, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Participants discussed specific actions to take skills development to the next level, incorporating perspectives and experiences of all stakeholders who have an impact on skills and employment, to understand the reasons for the growing skills mismatch impacting growth in Africa.

As part of the discussion, key stakeholders highlighted the massive labour market disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which disproportionately impacted vulnerable groups. In one respect, women have suffered significantly greater losses of income and jobs through their over-representation in the most affected sectors, and in another, young people are now facing multiple shocks, as they see education opportunities, and training opportunities disappear. In addition, disruptions to work and training are further amplified by huge digital divides.

Understanding that African countries are different and need different solutions, what we take away from this Conference is that TVET and Skills development must be better linked to national economies, in line with priority job creating sectors.  In response, the final outcomes of the conference saw the ACJ programme deliver on key milestones for a skills revolution by 2030 and an urgent call for ACJ 2021 Action.

The post-event advocacy to rally partners and key stakeholders for collaboration includes:

• Awareness Raising - Enhance visibility, attractiveness, and recognition of TVET as critical and essential for driving productivity and competitiveness of African economies through demand -driven skills development.

• Benchmarking of TVET - Develop benchmarking of TVET and skills development systems in Africa

• Skills Development and TVET - Strengthen capacity for practical and demand orientated TVET, inclusion of apprenticeships in national qualification frameworks, integrate recognition of prior learning and support skills competitions in Africa.

• Data Collection, Knowledge Management and Sharing - Strengthen mechanisms for expanding information access and outreach through supporting collection, documentation, sharing, and replication of good practices and innovative ideas on skills development and TVET, using existing knowledge sharing platforms and built capacities on these good practices to encourage replication

• Incentivise Skilling, Reskilling, and Upskilling - Collaborate to cultivate & encourage skilling, reskilling & upskilling based on the results and outcomes of skills anticipation & matching initiatives

• Skills anticipation for a purpose-fit labour force- Strengthen national labour market information systems to systematically identify and address future skills to close the skills gap between demand and supply as economies recover and evolve

• Assess Progress - Meet again in 2023 to assess the progress of the African skills revolution according to the progress reported by the AUC and the TVET cluster

From purposeful dialogue to action

The conference ended with a call for urgent action to all actors- the African Union, Regional Economic Communities, Member States, business sector, training and skills development practitioners, development partners and in particular the Youth- to bring together their collective leadership to collaborate for the change we all desire to see- an agile and responsive jobs and skills revolution for the Africa We Want.

Through the ACJ Continental Dialogue, we are creating a platform for dialogue with a purpose, reflection, learning, as critical drivers for innovation, all the while, to foster partnerships aimed at developing viable solutions and responsive actions to open opportunities for African youth.

ENDS

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Notes to the Editor:

The Continental Africa Creates Jobs (ACJ) Conference is executed by the Skills Initiative for Africa (SIFA), a programme of the African Union Commission in partnership with the German Ministry of Development Cooperation (BMZ) and the European Union and is implemented by the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) with technical assistance from German development agency (GIZ) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).  SIFA partners also include Business Africa and Association of Technical Universities and Polytechnics in Africa (ATUPA. The SIFA programme aims to improve the occupational prospects of young people in Africa through public and private partnerships between business and technical, vocational educational training (TVET) institutions.