EOH Work Readiness Initiative - Narrative Reports 2014 - 2015 Aug. 2014 | Page 8

WORK READINESS INITIATIVE UNDER DIGITAL JOBS FOR AFRICA

cost of just under US$4 trillion10. It is the world’s fastest
growing mobile phone market, and more than half of its
1.1 billion population are mobile subscribers, compared to
just 16 million in the year 2000. Mobile data consumption
is on par with that of most developed markets11.
Digital jobs depend on ICT infrastructure, which is why
Africa is uniquely positioned to create employment for
digital workers and these jobs could be a lifeline to the
continent’s unemployed youth.

CAN DIGITAL JOBS EMPOWER AFRICAN YOUTH?
The World Economic Forum estimates that around 150
million new jobs could be created in ICT for Africans
by 2020. However current research shows that youth
rec eive only around 22% of new jobs created in Africa12,
despite making up 60% of its unemployed13. Employment
creation on a large scale will not therefore, in itself,
empower disadvantaged youth unless factors hindering
their employment are explicitly addressed in youth
empowerment initiatives.
The barrier to employment faced by youth around the
world is that they lack work experience The risk and
cost to employers in hiring them will therefore always
be greater than that of hiring similarly skilled but already
experienced employees. As long as companies view
induction, training and development as “non-core
business”, on-boarding youth will always be seen as a
cost to be minimised rather than an investment in the
human capability of the organisation14.
Inexperienced youth globally therefore find themselves
in a “catch 22” situation where they cannot get access
to the employment that would give them the experience
they need to get access to employment.
In Africa, disadvantaged youth face additional barriers to
entering the increasingly globalised workforce including
social and political instability, distance from resources,
poverty, language barriers, culture differences, and
gender discrimination..
Helping youth access the digital jobs market would
therefore require preparatory skills development to
provide functional and behavioural skills not typically
provided by the public schooling system (generally
referred to as work readiness programmes). It would
also require opportunities for real work experience
linked to formal theoretical education for entry-level IT
occupations (referred to in South Africa under various
names including workplace learning, work integrated
learning, on-the-job-training, and learnerships).

GROWING DEMAND TO MATCH SUPPLY
The relationship between increased work experience and
improved employability was implicit in training models
such as those developed by the artisans and masons
in Europe during the Middle Ages, but was increasingly
obscured with the advent of the industrial age and “mass
produced” education.
Parents, mentors, tutors and master craftsmen were
absorbed into the formal, industrialised workforce, and
the preparation of youth for employment was shifted
to educational institutions, which imitated aspects of
Henry Ford’s successful assembly line model. The first
Human Resource Development practitioners (trainers)
emerged at this time to make up for what was to become
an increasingly obvious gap between the supply of
learners from the educational system and the demand for
competent employees in the labour market.
As the nature of work has become more and more
complex, with occupational specialisations becoming
the norm, the lack of work experience in the schooling
system has become more of a disadvantage for the
youth it aims to serve.
Now as the Rockefeller Foundation and EOH seek
solutions to youth employability which go beyond
improving the “supply side” of the labour force equation,
they are seeing the importance of engaging the
“demand side” of the learning equation (the employment
environment)15.
For EOH this involves reducing the risk and cost to South
African employers of hiring and training high potential but
disadvantaged youth.
For Rockefeller Foundation it means partnering with
organisations such as EOH as they open workplaces up
for youth, while simultaneously using inclusive business
practices, such as impact sourcing, to increase the pool
of available employment opportunities for youth. This is
an important step in addressing the problem of youth
unemployment because currently only around 40,000
new digital jobs per year are created in the six countries
where Digital Jobs Africa is being implemented. This
despite the fact that all six countries have big digital work
opportunities, as reported in the Dalberg study, Digital
Jobs in Africa.

10 https://manypossibilities.net/african-undersea-cables/ last accessed 20 August 2014
11 Harji, K. & Best, H. Digital Jobs: Building Skills for the Future (2013): 3.
12 ibid., p. 2.
13 ibid., p. 2.
14 This is why the role of intermediary human capital BPO firms is so important
in youth empowerment. EOH is approximately one third a human capital BPO,
and two thirds an ICT services company, which makes it an ideal champion for
youth empowerment.

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15 Supply and demand dynamics are a helpful way of understanding the labour
market. Supply in this case is typical some kind of education or training institution and demand is an employer.