Insight 13/08/2024

From foundational learning to future readiness: a call to action to tackle the youth crisis in Africa

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The African Union (AU) Year of Education is stimulating important discussions about the stark reality of educational underachievement in Africa, and galvinising political will around the urgent and critical need for action. However, solving the foundational learning crisis is not enough – we must also tackle Africa’s youth unemployment crisis.

Youth unemployment in Africa is the highest of any region globally. Currently, there is no single unifying concept that concerns preparing and enabling African youth to successfully transition into employment and livelihoods. We advocate for the term future readiness, which means supporting young people – including women and people living with a disability – to gain the skills, knowledge, awareness and, crucially, the opportunity to engage with and thrive in dignified employment.

In this think piece, we explore what future readiness means and what is needed to achieve it, and we call upon key stakeholders to mobilise around this common purpose. We advocate for a coordinated campaign that learns from the foundational learning concept to promote youth transitions into work, using it as a vehicle, along with increased funding, to produce better evidence, models, and system solutions. This would start with secondary schools, and link to colleges, skills providers, employers, and all levels of government. As an organisation with a deep understanding of youth employability, and over 30 years of experience working in Africa, we urge action now.

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From foundational learning to future readiness: a call to action to tackle the youth crisis in Africa

In this African Union Year of Education, we celebrate the success to date of the foundational learning campaign, and advocate here for a new coalition of actors to similarly rally around a complementary concept of future readiness to tackle the crisis of youth unemployment.

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