By Suleiman O. Abdulahi
Talent is Africa’s biggest export but only if it’s structured. Everywhere you look, young Africans are working remotely, freelancing, or migrating. This tells you talent isn’t the problem but coordination. Our challenge isn’t a skills shortage; it’s a system shortage. We train without placement, we certify without connection and we empower without structure.
The future belongs to countries that treat their workforce as an asset class, not a humanitarian issue. That means aligning education, labor, and industry through one lens: employability. Africa’s next economy won’t be built by aid. It’ll be built by well-managed human capital pipelines that convert skills into jobs, jobs into value, and value into growth.
The problem isn’t the absence of jobs but pathways that connect people to sustainable jobs. We keep producing graduates without guidance, training youth without transition, and funding enterprises without follow-up. The result is a talent pipeline with leaks at every level. We must move from celebrating numbers trained to celebrating lives transformed.
Despite decades of investment and training, youth employment initiatives in Nigeria continue to fall short in delivering sustainable livelihoods. According to its report, the Mastercard Foundation, through its partnership with Jobberman under the Young Africa Works initiative, has provided over 2.4 million Nigerian youth with job-readiness and soft skills training. Yet less than 10% have directly secured dignified jobs through this initiative.
The Nigeria Jubilee Fellows Programme (NJFP), implemented by UNDP with support from the European Union, had placed more than 14,000 graduates in 12-month fellowships across various organizations during its flagship edition. But to date, fewer than 2,000 remain in sustainable employment. At the national level, initiatives such as N-Power have enrolled, trained, and deployed over a million, five hundred graduates and non-graduates into various program components from N-Teach to N-Health, N-Agro, N-Build (TVET), and N-Knowledge Tech (Digital Skills). Despite success stories and many lives impacted or transformed, fewer than 15% of beneficiaries remain in gainful employment or enterprises few years after despite significant government investment.
My experience and research have proved that many beneficiaries conclude their fellowship or training with nothing more than monthly stipends and certificates. Few secure stable employment, and even fewer build sustainable enterprises. Estimates suggest that less than 13% of beneficiaries across major youth programs transition into meaningful work or business ownership over time.
At N-Power, I learned this firsthand: a well-designed pathway doesn’t just train, it transforms. It connects potential to purpose and people to possibilities. The future belongs to countries that build “skills-to-jobs” bridges where technical training meets market demand, and entrepreneurial support meets financial access and access to market.
We tell young people to be resilient, to keep showing up, to hustle harder but resilience without structure is burnout in disguise. If governments and development partners keep pushing empowerment without institutional follow-through, we’re not empowering, we’re exhausting the productivity of our young workforce. Every successful youth initiative must connect three dots: training ? transition ? transformation.
It’s time to build systems that don’t just inspire hope but deliver continuity, where every program becomes a pathway, not a pit stop. Too often, we focus on interventions that provide immediate relief, leaving individuals and communities vulnerable or worse off. Short-term relief is essential, but long-term sustainable solutions are the only way to achieve meaningful change and impact. The persistence of these program failures stems from several common issues: skills mismatch, siloed interventions, weak follow-up, and a lack of systems thinking.
In development, many projects are designed to look good on paper but fail to change lives in practice. We celebrate reports instead of results. I’ve seen programs that trained thousands yet transformed none and at best, only a few achieve sustainable impact. Impact should no longer be measured by how many attended but how many advanced and how many lives were transformed.
True transformation happens when systems are built to sustain progress after the cameras are gone. The next phase of Africa’s development isn’t about new initiatives. It’s about institutional framework that continues to deliver value without constant reinvention. We must move from events to ecosystems, from outputs to outcomes. That’s how we shift from program activity to actual impact.
Many public-private partnerships in Africa collapse not because of funding gaps, but because of trust gaps. One partner brings capital, the other brings people. But without shared ownership, neither brings commitment. Real PPPs must be built on co-creation and not contracts written in silos. Government must learn agility from the private sector. The private sector must learn purpose from public institutions. For African nations to achieve inclusive growth, we must ensure strategic partnerships deeply rooted in collaboration, not charity. These partnerships should be co-investments in shared futures.
We need a multi-stakeholder youth employment system rather than disjointed programs. This system must involve academia to ensure curricula match real-world skills demand; industry and employers co-design training, guarantee placements, and absorb skilled youth; governments and policymakers to establish enabling frameworks, incentives, regulations, and labor-market alignment; and development partners to support coordination, data tracking, scaling, and hold accountability for long-term outcomes.
It’s time we move beyond merely counting certifications and applause. We must create a skills-to-job ecosystem where youth program success results in a paycheck, a stable job, or a thriving business, not just applause and reports.
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