Background

Africa’s growing youth population represents one of the most promising resources of our continent. Yet, many young people face significant challenges in accessing decent work, including youth unemployment, working poverty, informality and gender inequalities.

Under the aegis of the Global Initiative on Decent Jobs for Youth, the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), with the support of the African Union (AU), have launched a programme with continental reach to create decent employment and enhance skills for youth in Africa’s digital economy.

The programme’s overarching goal is to increase the number of young Africans who access decent work in the digital economy in selected target countries: Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa.

In support of this joint programme, the ILO, the ITU and the AU are organizing a virtual roundtable featuring multi-stakeholder dialogues to build sustainable partnerships and explore funding mechanisms.

Objectives

The objectives of the virtual roundtable are to:

1. Highlight priorities, needs and challenges of target countries to create jobs, promote entrepreneurship opportunities, narrow digital skills gaps, and streamline labour intermediation for young people in the digital economy.
2. Hold multi-stakeholder dialogues to explore synergies with existing initiatives at the country- and regional level in the key work areas of the Joint Programme.
3. Seek expressions of interest to mobilize financial resources from development partners and non-financial support from youth employment stakeholders to contribute to the implementation of the programme at the continental and/or country-level.

Participants & Registration

The virtual roundtable will bring together participants representing governments, workers’ and employers’ organizations of the programme target countries, youth-led organizations, UN organizations, bilateral and multilateral development partners, development banks, the private sector, including firms operating in the digital economy, and financial service providers.

The virtual roundtable will offer participants a diverse programme of keynote speeches, and multi-stakeholder dialogues, including with youth representatives.

English and French simultaneous interpretation is available.

The roundtable will be hosted on Zoom for which pre-registration is mandatory.