Developing youth skills, building futures: Africa’s green transition

Image: Magnific

“Youth aren’t just the future, they’re leading today’s green revolution…
Proving that green skills don’t just clean cities,
they build sustainable economies where nothing is wasted,
and everyone thrives.”
— Hope for Future Generations (HFFG), Ghana

 

World Youth Skills Day is observed annually on July 15 to celebrate the strategic importance of equipping young people with technical, vocational, digital and entrepreneurial skills for employment and sustainable development.

Africa is home to the world’s youngest population, with roughly 70% of the continent under the age of 30. This growing working-age population is a massive strategic asset, projected to expand significantly over the coming decade. But how are we preparing them for the green jobs of the future?

This year’s global observance was marked under the theme “Skills for a Shared Future,” emphasising inclusive, future-ready and resilient education systems.

84.5 million green jobs

In this GEE edition, Kevin Munjal, Director of Development Impact at FSD Africa, highlights the potential for up to 84.5 million green jobs in Africa by 2050, as per a recent FSD Report, if capital flows to service-led value chains, regulations are enforced and skills systems modernised.

How can African governments and industry can rapidly scale vocational training and skills systems to meet demand? Says Kevin: “Africa’s renewable energy workforce is around 324,000 people—just 2% of the global total—despite the continent holding 60% of the world’s best solar resources. That gap cannot be closed through the formal TVET system alone, which is too slow to reform and too geographically fixed to reach the workers who need it most.”

He explains: “The most effective approaches we’ve seen share a common design principle: train for a specific job with a guaranteed income pathway. The Rural Electrification Agency’s NextGen model in Nigeria—bootcamp training paired with a nine-month paid internship—is a strong example. South Africa’s Grootbos Green Futures programme places 90% of its trainees into roles in the local restoration economy.” [Read the full interview here].

John Roome, AGES Chairman, Independent Senior Adviser on Climate Change, Sustainable Development and Infrastructure and former World Bank climate change pioneer, agrees that “a wide range of different skills, from incredibly high-level to trade skills, will be needed in order to drive the green agenda on the African continent.” [Read the full interview here].

Continentwide leadership skills training

The United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) drives youth empowerment and leadership in Africa through targeted capacity-building, digital integration and global advisory platforms. Operating under the motto “30 below 30, to get to 2030,” their Youth Engagement Platform (YEP) brings together 30 young leaders under age 30 globally—including voices from Africa—to serve in an advisory capacity.

In Sierra Leone, UNOPS launched projects to build modern ICT labs in regional schools, set up e-learning platforms for national exams, and train over 600 youths in digital transformation and entrepreneurship across high-potential sectors like agriculture and health. In Tunisia and Libya, UNOPS has provided technical coordination and microfinancing to help young graduates enter the green economy, resulting in clean-tech startup creation and specialised vocational training.

MINDS platform

The Mandela Institute for Development Studies (MINDS), an Africa-wide think tank and leadership platform dedicated to strengthening governance, advancing dialogue and cultivating the next generation of African leaders. In the last 15 years, MINDS has directly supported and engaged 758 young leaders across the continent through its core development program.

Electoral governance training, pan-African youth mobilisation, and postgraduate leadership development form part of this growing network, reflecting our long-term commitment to strengthening African leadership from within.

AfDB Youth Adapt

The YouthADAPT programme is a flagship joint initiative by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) designed to empower young entrepreneurs to scale climate adaptation and resilience solutions in Africa.

The core objective is to empower youth-led (18-35) micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) to scale climate adaptation, with a focus on at least 50% women-owned participation. The YouthADAPT Challenge competition awards grants of up to $100,000 for innovative climate solutions.

Formula Student Africa

Getting down to the nuts and bolts of it all, is the Formula Student Africa programme.

FSA Founder Alexander McLeod explains: “Formula Student Africa is about university students or higher education students, that could be colleges, technical colleges or university students, building a Formula style race car. And for that car and the team to go through some assessment and then ultimately being scored and there being a winner. So the competition aspect is still very much the same as existing Formula Student competition activities outside of Africa.”

However, it is the way in which Formula Student Africa is delivered that is different. McLeod: “While existing Formula Student formats put competition first, we’re looking at putting education first—spreading awareness about careers studies opportunities in the automotive sector, more specifically the e-mobility sector, so everything around electrification, electric vehicles.” [Read the full interview here].

Mati Taimu, a third‑year mechatronics student at UCT and member of the university’s Formula Student Africa Racing Team describes her journey as a team member as inspiring and challenging, where members learn to manage their time, communicate clearly, work effectively in a team as well as getting familiar with all the technical requirements of building a car. [Read the full interview here].

Skills at the core of the transition

Earlier this year, during the Africa’s Green Economy Summit Day 2 opening session with the theme of “Building Skills for Africa’s Green Transition,” Maxwell Gomera, Resident Representative of UNDP South Africa and Director of the Africa Sustainable Finance Hub, Africa Region stated that “skills are at the core of the transition. Without the right skills, we’re not going to get very far. And we are not doing as well as we should at the moment.”

He mentioned that China trained an estimated 1.4 million engineers per year while there were less than 100 000 across the African continent that qualified annually. “You can see the skills gap is huge. Europe is doing a little bit better with a couple of hundred thousand, but still, we are nowhere near where we need to be. So we need to think about how we start to train a new cadre of entrepreneurs and young people who have skillsets that match the green economy.”

– This article first appeared in the Green Economy Express newsletter, published by Africa’s Green Economy Summit