Future Work Africa unveils report on solutions to youth unemployment

Future Work Africa (FWA), an initiative of the Gates Foundation Goalkeepers Accelerator Programme, has launched a report to address youth unemployment in Africa.

This initiative, which was set up by three Nigerian goalkeepers — Mayowa Tijani, Uche Pedro, and Azeez Salawu — aims to prepare the African youth for the jobs of the future.

The project also seeks to leverage the changing global employment landscape, using technology and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve skill and productivity across Africa.

Speaking at the event on Thursday, Mayowa Tijani, FWA co-lead and editor-at-large at TheCable, said the initiative was designed to envision the future and prepare young Africans for the jobs they will occupy in that future.

He emphasised the importance of updating the continent’s curriculum to match the requirements of the future technology-driven environment.

“Future Work Africa is an initiative to design what the future is going to look like and to prepare young Africans for the jobs that are going to feature in that future,” he said.

“Some Nigerian youths who are reinventing themselves are ready for that future. Some who are not are not ready for that future, which is why we are actually bringing up this initiative to let them know what they can do, learn and focus on.

“There is a lot more work that needs to be done in the curriculum in terms of designing it to fit the needs of the future. What are we teaching people about power generation in the future? What are we teaching about the use of AI? How are we telling people that certain jobs will no longer be available or will not be necessary to be done by humans in the next 10 years?

“So the curriculum is not entirely fit in that sense but we can make it fit. This is why we are doing this research; such that a lot more policies can be made in designing the curriculum for the future.”

Uche Pedro, founder of BellaNaija and co-lead at FWA, also said the prosperity of the continent depends largely on getting young people employed in decent work.

“The achievement of the goal 8 of the SDG is the priority of the initiative,” she said.

Azeez Salawu, co-lead at FWA and founder of Community Action for Food Security (CAFS), expressed gratitude to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and PopWorks Africa for supporting the initiative.

‘WE NEED TO WORK TOGETHER TO ADDRESS GLOBAL CHALLENGES’

Also speaking at the launch, Will Stevens, the United States (US) consul general, emphasised the need to join hands with the government to motivate young Africans to leverage their resources and technological progress for the development of their countries.

He said the US is dedicated to attracting more investment capital to the continent, urging US companies to invest not only in production but also in the development of the people.

“We need to think about how we can work together to ensure that these people are employed, and also helping to add value to their local economies and to addressing the difficulties of the world,” he said.

“I am a huge believer in the power of the private sector and I think as we unlock that potential by creating opportunities and ensuring that investment can flow and that companies are able to do business easily, you are going to see more and more people who already recognise that incredible resource of the Nigerian people coming here and trying to tap into that resource which creates value here in this market.

“The challenges that we face as a world are global in nature, whether it be the impacts of climate change and how we mitigate those impacts, whether it be global food insecurity, or backsliding in democracy and these are challenges that are faced around the world, and we need to work together.

“We need to recognise that those are global challenges and recognise that there are going to be African solutions and American solutions and we need to bring them together.”

The consul general emphasised the efforts of the US to ensure African representation in the United Nations security council, highlighting the importance of African participation in global forums to collectively address shared challenges.

The report unveiled by FWA highlighted the top 10 industries of the future and the most relevant jobs for the next decade. You can access the full report here.