Youth employment interventions in Ghana

This African Policy Dialogue seeks to generate research evidence on what works or does not work in youth employment interventions, contribute to the design of youth intervention in Ghana.

Led by Netherlands-African Business Council (NABC)

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About the policy dialogue

Despite relatively high rates of economic growth and numerous interventions initiated by the Government of Ghana to address employment challenges, unemployment remains high, especially among the youth, and other challenges such as underemployment are yet to be adequately addressed. This is partly because government interventions are often discontinued when a different political party forms government after national elections. The other reason for this is poor alignment between the focus of interventions and the demands of the labour market. The interventions generally encompass skills development for occupational classes or enterprise development segments with limited labour market demand. In addition, employment interventions are implemented in isolation, which makes it difficult to link their different perspectives. Finding out the extent to which the interventions have met their objectives and what has worked for youth is difficult due to lack of meta-analyses of youth employment interventions. This African Policy Dialogue (APD) seeks to generate research evidence on what works and what does not in youth  employment interventions and contribute to the design of youth  interventions in Ghana.

Partners

  • Netherlands-African Business Council (NABC)
  • Other actors: government agencies such as ministries linked to youth employment, agriculture, and business development; representatives of political parties; labour unions; youth groups; knowledge institutions; civil society; multilateral development institutions; and the Dutch Embassy in Ghana
Objectives
  • Develop a coherent understanding of the root causes of youth unemployment across diverse youth demographic cohorts
  • Develop comprehensive knowledge of previous and existing youth interventions to determine the (non)efficacy of interventions
  • Use research evidence from the two objectives above to inform policy dialogue on youth employment
  • Establish a network of relevant private-public-civil sector stakeholders in Ghana and engage them in
    dialogue on youth employment
  • Inform the formulation and implementation of new policies, and align existing policies and programmes
Country focus
  • Ghana