Productive inclusion mechanisms within social protection programs, such as cash transfers that include training, could be aligned to the needs of SMEs, which might also help resilience. However, quick relief incentives from government are not sustainable for job creation, which must come from the private sector. So we must also look at how these current interventions can improve the longer-term outlook for job creation and private sector stimulus.

In response to a global COVID-19-induced recession, the international community is responding with ideas and innovations for stability and recovery. This is happening across the development landscape, with both traditional aid actors and non-traditional “new-aid” partners (like large tech or pharmaceutical companies) mobilizing to address economic security.

The latest International Labour Organization (ILO) COVID-19 and the World of Work report forecasts that the equivalent of 22 million full-time jobs will be lost in Africa in the second quarter of 2020 alone. In addition, 26.4% of workers in Africa are working in at-risk sectors, and only 17.8% of the population is covered with some form of social protection. These statistics don’t only include youth, but as 15-34 year-olds make up close to half of the continent’s working age population (according to the ILO) and also account for a vast majority of vulnerable agricultural and informal workers, young people will be the first to feel the effects of this recession – and likely the last to recover.

Many of these “at-risk” sectors are also the growth sectors targeted for Africa’s longer-term youth employment strategies. However, these strategies tend to feature a longer-term inclusive growth agenda, rather than one which offers shock-responsive protection in response to an economic crisis. And so COVID-19 will add an additional layer of burden to the very strategies already working to support youth employment. Without proper protection for these sectors and the youth that work in them, the pandemic’s effects are likely to be amplified.

Unfortunately, the specific needs of young people are rarely the focus of social protection systems, so they often lack access to many basic forms of support. And those services they do have access to, such as health insurance or unemployment benefits, are often contributory programs geared toward older people with a longer formal work history. Moreover, due to the high rates of vulnerable working conditions and informal Labour in Africa (where 71.9% of non-agriculture work is currently informal), young people are at disproportional and prolonged risk of suffering the effects of the COVID-19 recession.

Yet while the current outlook may seem bleak, there are a number of opportunities for us to respond to the crisis. Join us to explore some of the ways we can innovate upon existing tools and infrastructure to meet some of this youth employment challenge.