In our approach to tackle youth employment, especially to support to the implementation of a comprehensive continental Rural Futures Programme and provide evidence-based recommendations to national governments to enhance job creation and harness skills development opportunities in Africa particularly in the rural space, the NEPAD Agency carried out a skills audit on skills development and job creation in 10 selected African countries.

The country studies assessed the different programme structures, financing arrangements, employability and successful integration of graduates into sustainable jobs and addressed the emerging issues and their influence on overall skills development particularly in the agriculture sector. Strategic to NEPAD transformation vision in this study was the aspect of the high growth potential of green economy related jobs as a result of increased climate change regulation and the need to develop energy efficient and renewable resources to replace traditional biomass source of energy that has negative impacts both on health as well as on ecology (deforestation).

The paper defines strategic directions focused on skills development for youth employment and women and that will be discussed at the 2nd Africa Rural Development Forum to be presented to African policy makers at the AU Summit in January 2017.