Decent Jobs in Africa’s Digital Economy

This hybrid session supports the ILO, ITU and AU Joint Programme on Boosting Decent Jobs and Enhancing Skills for Youth in Africa’s Digital Economy in championing youth-led solutions and empower young people to contribute to the digital transformation of their societies. The objectives of the session were threefold:

1. To discuss solutions to create decent jobs for young people in the fast-growing digital economy.
2. To share examples and lessons learned on building successful partnerships between youth organisations and development partners.
3. To explore how youth organisation can link their projects to and be supported by the ILO, ITU and AU through the Joint Programme on Boosting Decent Jobs and Enhancing Skills for Youth in Africa’s Digital Economy

The African Union estimates that there are over 400 million people between the ages of 15 and 35 living in Africa. As the continent’s most important source of human capital, young people are the future and deserve decent jobs. The growing digital economy across the continent offers opportunities for young people to fulfil their potential. However, young people continue to face multidimensional challenges to access decent work. The working realities of many African youth are dominated by low pay, temporary and precarious employment, informality, no social protection, insecure and unsafe work. Those challenges were gravely aggravated by the socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, the pandemic also underscored the growing importance of digital technologies to Africa’s economic future and building back better. It has made clear that Africa’s digital transformation presents new possibilities for decent and resilient jobs for youth. It has shown the tremendous potential of young people themselves to innovate, to develop, test and scale solutions to create decent jobs for themselves and their peers through digital technologies. To enable more young Africans to access decent work opportunities, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the African Union (AU) are implementing a Joint Programme on Boosting Decent Jobs and Enhancing Skills for Youth in Africa’s Digital Economy.

Participants joined this hybrid session to share their ideas, innovations and impactful projects that can inspire others and allow for the scaling of solutions on the African continent, and across the globe.

Questions that guided the session include:

• Why does digital transformation matter and how can youth actively engage in, contribute to, and shape partnerships that support such efforts?
• How do we build partnerships and project that focus on young people and their decent work aspirations?
• How can development partners support young people to best leverage and scale innovate solutions to create decent jobs for youth in the digital economy?

Organized by: ILO, ITU, and the Nigerian SDG Youth Network