Increasing Regional Collaboration for Youth Labor Mobility to Expand Job Opportunities and Skills Development for Young People

A keynote speech delivered by Mavis Owusu-Gyamfi of the African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET) at the Youth Connekt Africa Summit, advocating for increased regional labor mobility to address youth unemployment and skills gaps in Africa.

• Africa is experiencing a significant youth bulge, with projections that by 2050 the population will reach 2.5 billion, and half of these individuals will be under the age of 25. This results in more people entering the labor force than in any other global region.
• There is a critical gap between job creation and the number of new labor market entrants. While the region needs at least 1 million decent jobs monthly to employ new entrants, it is currently only creating 3.1 million jobs per year.
• Young Africans face significant skills deficits; an ACET study across Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Niger, Rwanda, and Uganda found that at least 20% of secondary school graduates in these countries lacked necessary training in problem solving, communication, leadership, and ICT literacy.
• International migration of Africans increased by 91.2% between 2008 and 2017, rising from 13.3 million to 25.4 million people, with most migrants aged between 15 and 35.
• ACET proposes three policy recommendations to enable labor mobility: adopting common standard procedures and digital identification to ease movement, establishing a continent-wide standard for the mutual recognition of qualifications and degrees, and creating a regional Labor Market Information System (LMIS) skills database.
• The African Continental Free Trade Area (AFCFTA) has created a market of over 1.3 billion people and is estimated to lead to the creation of 14 million jobs per year if effectively implemented.

APA

Owusu-Gyamfi, M. (2021). Increasing Regional Collaboration for Youth Labor Mobility to Expand Job Opportunities and Skills Development for Young People. African Center for Economic Transformation. https://acetforafrica.org/news-and-media/speeches-transcripts/increasing-regional-collaboration-for-youth-labor-mobility-to-expand-job-opportunities-and-skills-development-for-young-people/

Chicago

Owusu-Gyamfi, Mavis. Increasing Regional Collaboration for Youth Labor Mobility to Expand Job Opportunities and Skills Development for Young People. African Center for Economic Transformation, 2021. https://acetforafrica.org/news-and-media/speeches-transcripts/increasing-regional-collaboration-for-youth-labor-mobility-to-expand-job-opportunities-and-skills-development-for-young-people/.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |last1=Owusu-Gyamfi |first1=Mavis |title=Increasing Regional Collaboration for Youth Labor Mobility to Expand Job Opportunities and Skills Development for Young People |publisher=African Center for Economic Transformation |date=1 November 2021 |url=https://acetforafrica.org/news-and-media/speeches-transcripts/increasing-regional-collaboration-for-youth-labor-mobility-to-expand-job-opportunities-and-skills-development-for-young-people/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{owusugyamfi2021increasing, author = {Owusu-Gyamfi, Mavis}, title = {{Increasing Regional Collaboration for Youth Labor Mobility to Expand Job Opportunities and Skills Development for Young People}}, publisher = {African Center for Economic Transformation}, year = {2021}, month = nov, url = {https://acetforafrica.org/news-and-media/speeches-transcripts/increasing-regional-collaboration-for-youth-labor-mobility-to-expand-job-opportunities-and-skills-development-for-young-people/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }