The youth unemployment challenge in Africa: What are the drivers?

William Baah-Boateng

The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 2016, vol. 27, issue 4, 413-431

Abstract: Youth unemployment remains a major political and socioeconomic challenge in Africa despite the recent strong growth performance of many African countries. The study undertakes an empirical assessment of the main sources of youth unemployment in Africa. Based on panel data of 41 African countries covering the period 2000–2010, the study finds a demographic youth bulge and poor economic growth from both supply and demand sides of the market to be key drivers of youth unemployment in Africa. Employment-to-population ratio as a measure of country’s job creation ability and vulnerable employment as a proxy for informality are observed to have had a decreasing effect on youth unemployment. The empirical findings also suggest higher youth employment rates among females than males and a higher concentration in urban than rural areas. Investment in the high labour absorption sectors of agriculture and manufacturing is advocated as job creation strategies, along with population control measures to slow the growing youth population in Africa. High growth in the low employment sectors of mining and extractive industries could serve as resource generating avenues to promote investment in education and skill training, along with infrastructure to facilitate growth in high labour absorption sectors.

Keywords: Africa; economic growth; informal economy; labour markets; theories of unemployment; vulnerable workers; youth unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J N37 N57 N67 O17 O55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1035304616645030 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecolab:v:27:y:2016:i:4:p:413-431

DOI: 10.1177/1035304616645030

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Economic and Labour Relations Review
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().