AfricaWorking to impact 250,000 youth on employability, entrepreneurship skills

AfricaWorking, a new private sector initiative committed to impacting Africa on employability and entrepreneurship skills, says its agenda was to support 200,000 youth and 50,000 entrepreneurs by 2020.

The new group consists private companies like Microsoft, Barclays Africa, Emerging World, FranklinCovey, Knod, Safal Group and Syngenta, with the objective of channeling their collective powers to create job opportunities across Africa.

ReStraL Ltd, a company founded in 1996 by a former Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Ifueko Omogui-Okauru, represents FranklinCovey in Nigeria and other parts of English speaking Africa.

“Most large corporations are looking at youth skills development in one form or another, because it’s important to their business.

“The idea behind AfricaWorking is to bring these corporations together, align their efforts, share their learnings and build human capital on a pan-Africa scale,” Dean of the Microsoft 4Afrika Academy, Lutz Ziob, explained in a statement.

General Manager, Enterprise Development: Citizenship for Barclays Africa, Charles Reed,projects that by 2045, Africa’s labour market would be the biggest in the world, pointing out that it presented a huge opportunity for the group to engage the youth, help them develop relevant skills and find meaningful employment opportunities.

Mr. Reed said key to the effort to realize the agenda was for members of AfricaWorkingto collaborate and leverage technology where it makes sense to do so.