AfricaWorking: corporates announce plan to give 250k youth entrepreneurship, employability skills

A number of companies, including Barclays Africa; Emerging World; FranklinCovey; Knod; Microsoft; Safal Group; and Syngenta, this week came together to announce AfricaWorking — an initiative which aims to provide some 250 000 youth across the continent with entrepreneurial and employability skills.

Starting in Kenya and South Africa, the initiative aims to work across the continent by 2020.

“Most large corporations are looking at youth skills development in one form or another, because it’s crucial to their business,” says Lutz Ziob, Dean of the Microsoft 4Afrika Academy. “The idea behind AfricaWorking is to bring these corporations together, align our efforts, share our learnings and build human capital on a pan-Africa scale”.

“By 2045,” says Charles Reed, General Manager for Community Investment for Barclays Africa, the continent’s labour market is “projected to be the biggest in the world. There is a great opportunity for us to engage the youth, help them develop relevant skills and find meaningful employment opportunities. Key to this is for us to collaborate and leverage technology where it makes sense to do so.”

According to a press release sent to Ventureburn, AfricaWorking will leverage existing approaches and two bespoke ‘engines’ to help get youth career- and business-ready, and create a pipeline of recruitable talent for member companies.

The initial platforms will leverage YouthWorks – a Microsoft entrepreneurship platform linking youth to training, mentors, small business support and access to finance – and an employability platform powered by Knod.

AfricaWorking members will apparently use this platform to create their talent pipeline and shape the skilled employees when and where they need them, through real world projects that form the basis of this innovative learning model.

“There is currently a significant mismatch between the skills youth have and the skills employers are looking for. Our goal is to connect learners and employers in a unique 21st Century experience based learning model, which develops skilled youth and an energised workforce of competent employees,” says Graham Doxey, CEO and Founder of Knod.