World Youth Skills Day: Young Africans cite inadequate training, lack of work experience as main barriers to youth employment

African youth identify inadequate training and a lack of required job experience as the leading barriers to youth employment, the latest Afrobarometer (www.Afrobarometer.org) survey findings reveal.

Based on nationally representative surveys in 38 African countries in 2024/2025, job creation is young people’s top priority for greater government investment to help youth, followed by education, jobs training, access to business loans, and social services.

Given a choice of employment sectors, a majority of young Africans would prefer to start their own business rather than be employed in government, industry, or the nonprofit sector.

More than half of young Africans say they have given at least “a little bit” of thought to moving to another country to live, mostly for economic reasons. Young citizens mention finding work, pursuing better business opportunities, escaping economic hardship or poverty, and other economic factors as primary considerations for thinking about moving abroad.

Key findings

• On average across 38 African countries, at least half of youth (50% of 18- to 25-year-olds and 54% of 26- to 35-year-olds) express a preference for entrepreneurship over working in the public sector (25%), the private sector (13%), or for nongovernmental organisations (6%) (Figure 1).
   
• When asked about the main barriers preventing young people from accessing employment (aside from general economic conditions and job scarcity), respondents of all ages point primarily to structural gaps in skills and training (Figure 2).
  • Lack of adequate training emerges as the top barrier, cited by about one-quarter (26%-27%) of young respondents, followed by lack of work experience (19%-20%). Others point to youth unwillingness to work certain jobs, such as those in agriculture or “difficult” jobs (14%-15%), a skills mismatch between training and employers’ needs (14%), and a lack of entrepreneurial skills and motivation among young people (11%).
     
• Nearly half (48%) of young Africans say that the government should direct spending on youth programmes toward job creation. Smaller minorities would prioritise education (17%), jobs training (14%), business loans (13%), and social services (8%) (Figure 3).
   
• More than half (55%) of young citizens have given at least “a little bit” of thought to moving to another country to live, including more than four in 10 (43%) who have considered it “somewhat” or “a lot” (Figure 4).
  • More than six in 10 young people have considered emigration “somewhat” or “a lot” in The Gambia (67%), Cabo Verde (66%), Liberia (66%), Guinea-Bissau (65%), and Ghana (63%).
• Economic factors dominate as young people’s primary motivation for considering emigration: Most cite better job opportunities (52%), escaping economic hardship (18%), escaping poverty/destitution (9%), or other economic factors (6%) (Figure 5).

Afrobarometer surveys

Afrobarometer is a pan-African, nonpartisan survey research network that provides reliable data on African experiences and evaluations of democracy, governance, and quality of life. Ten survey rounds in up to 45 countries have been completed since 1999. Round 10 surveys cover 38 countries surveyed in 2024/2025. Afrobarometer’s National Partners conduct face-to-face interviews in the language of the respondent’s choice that yield country-level results with margins of error of +/-2 to +/-3 percentage points at a 95% confidence level.

This 38-country analysis is based on 50,961 interviews. The data are weighted to ensure nationally representative samples. When reporting multi-country averages, all countries are weighted equally (rather than in proportion to population size).