Join us at this year’s Futuremakers Forum from 13-15 July to coincide with the United Nations’ World Skills Day. At the Forum we will hear from business leaders and the employees of the future, discuss emerging trends in the future world of work, and what it means for young people entering the job market over the next decade.

This interdisciplinary conference is a joint effort of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and the Global Initiative on Decent Jobs for Youth to advance policy research on youth transitions. The conference will bring together numerous academics and think tanks from across the globe, acting as a platform for them to analyse the state of policy research and draw a research agenda across multiple dimensions of youth transitions. These include the youth employment crisis and the future of work prospects; youth transitions in situations of conflict and peace-building; and youth participation in civic and political spheres. Register here 

Why YouthConnekt Africa Hub?

Africa's greatest resource is its youth. Yet, this abundant resource has been relatively untapped and facing cross-cutting issues such as limited access to education and finances, deterring health, scarce employment opportunities and low wages, and often excluded from local decision-making. As a result, these challenges, individually and collectively, obstruct the youth from meaningfully contributing to the social, economic and political transformation of their nations and the African continent at large.

YouthConnekt is a platform designed to connect the youth for socio-economic transformation. The purpose of the YouthConnekt Africa (YCA) Hub is to provide a holistic solution to alleviate the challenges faced by African youth by widening the pool of economic, social and civic leadership opportunities through National YouthConnekt initiatives. Essentially, the Hub will be supporting already existing African youth empowerment initiatives to propel and scale their efforts further.

Today, there are 1.2 billion young people aged 15 to 24 years, accounting for 16 per cent of the global population. The active engagement of youth in sustainable development efforts is central to achieving sustainable, inclusive and stable societies by the target date, and to averting the worst threats and challenges to sustainable development, including the impacts of climate change, unemployment, poverty, gender inequality, conflict, and migration. However, young people are almost three times more likely to be unemployed than adults and continuously exposed to lower quality of jobs, greater labor market inequalities, and longer and more insecure school-to-work transitions. In addition, women are more likely to be underemployed and under-paid, and to undertake part-time jobs or work under temporary contracts.

Traditionally organized by the Permanent Missions of Portugal and Sri Lanka, together with UNESCO, ILO and the Office of the Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, this year the UN’s observance of the WYSD will shed light on the mechanisms needed to operationalize lifelong learning.

The Youth Cafe and its members has hosted a range of events and taken part in the photo competition and story series to celebrate World Youth Skills Day.

Under the tagline “Rights and Voices of Youth”, The Youth Cafe has been invited to this year’s annual Decent Jobs for Youth conference invites a reflection on the transformative power of collective action in advancing a youth employment agenda that is rights-based, inclusive, and results-oriented. For all young people, especially those facing discrimination and disadvantage, human rights – which include labour rights – provide a base from which they can make their voices heard, assert their interests and find work that is productive and decent. We fully  tap into the potential of Decent Jobs for Youth's multi-stakeholder alliance, offering an event catered to knowledge exchange that features young global leaders at its heart. 

The Chairperson of the African Union Commission (AUC), H.E. Moussa Faki Mahamat will launch the “1 million by 2021 Initiative”, which targets direct investments in millions of African youth on four key elements of Employment, Entrepreneurship, Education and Engagement, through leveraging partnerships and private sector opportunities. The initiative will be launched through a Pan African Youth Forum themed “Africa Unite for Youth: Bridging the Gap and Reaching African Youth”.