Established in Kigali as the first U.S. university campus in Africa and funded by the African Development Fund, Carnegie Mellon University Africa offers ICT master’s programs and promotes female enrollment through targeted scholarships.Photo from Africa Development Bank
The African Development Bank, in partnership with the International Labour Organization, has introduced a transformative system aimed at integrating youth employment, skills development, and entrepreneurship into all its investment operations.
The new approach, called the Youth, Jobs and Skills Marker System, is closely tied to the Bank’s current Ten-Year Strategy, which places Africa’s youth at the center of its development priorities.
The goal is to maximize the impact of every dollar invested by turning Africa’s growing youth population into a demographic dividend.
Through this system, Bank-financed projects across key sectors such as agriculture, transport, energy, water, and education will deliberately include components that promote employability, entrepreneurship, and market-relevant skills for young people.
“The Youth, Jobs and Skills Marker System is about ensuring Africa’s young people have a real say and active role in building sustainable economies and creating jobs, not as passive recipients of youth programs,” said Dr. Beth Dunford, the Bank’s Vice President for Agriculture, Human and Social Development.
“This transformation of Bank practices and systems is a step toward making sure our investments have a positive impact on Africa’s young women and men.”
The system focuses on three core areas:
Youth: Supporting micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises led by youth through targeted funding and integration into operations.
Skills: Increasing access to practical, demand-driven training and apprenticeships that improve employability.
Jobs: Ensuring that Bank-supported initiatives create lasting job opportunities by equipping youth with relevant skills and supporting youth-led ventures in priority value chains.
Every year, between 10 and 12 million young Africans join the labor force, but only about three million formal jobs are available.
The Bank plans to prioritize youth entrepreneurship and attract private sector partners to scale up industry-driven training and employment generation in the years ahead.
“This initiative is very important because it allows us to significantly contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #8 that includes decent work for all,” said Peter van Rooij, Director of Multilateral Partnerships and Development Cooperation at the International Labour Organization.
“It also allows the International Labour Organization to influence the Bank’s work, to support their lending that is more geared toward more job creation and better jobs in a sustainable way.”
Modeled after the Bank’s successful Gender Marker System and its interactive dashboard, the Youth, Jobs and Skills Marker System will similarly include an online platform.
This tool will allow Bank staff and consultants to access real-time data when drafting country strategy papers, conducting mid-term reviews, supervising projects, compiling annual reports, and evaluating outcomes related to youth skills, employment, and entrepreneurship.
A pilot version of the system has already been launched in preparation for full implementation in 2026.
The system is designed to enhance youth employment tracking, improve data on skills acquisition, reinforce labor market information systems, and help policymakers make decisions grounded in solid evidence.
The International Labour Organization provided technical guidance during development, with financial backing from the Bank’s Youth Entrepreneurship and Innovation Multi-Donor Trust Fund.
The Youth, Jobs and Skills Marker System stands as the first initiative of its kind to be created by a development finance institution globally.
