Young, female and African: Barriers, interventions and opportunities for female youth employment in Africa
This paper synthesizes evidence on key barriers preventing young African women from joining the workforce as well as interventions to address these barriers and actions to enable young women’s equal and productive workforce participation. Documenting four distinct kinds of barriers: social and cultural, economic, conflict and fragility, and skills development, this paper finds that successful interventions combine wellbeing, capacity building, women’s access to jobs, and entrepreneurship, and that mobile telecommunications and the digital economy hold great potential for women’s employment.