What we can do about the Arab youth jobs crisis

The numbers are stark. A third of the population in the Arab world is below the age of 15 and a further third is aged 15 to 29. Some 50 to 70 million youths are expected to enter the job market in the next decade. But formal education is not enabling youths to find jobs, and two-thirds feel they do not have the necessary skills.

Despite the gravity of the challenge, we can take comfort in the fact that there are many people and organisations thinking and doing something about the education system that is failing Arab youth.

These stakeholders are stepping up, perhaps each in their individual sphere of focus, and therein lies a key to unlocking the potential of the Arab youth bulge – cooperation among the players.

Connecting the dots, scaling up successful efforts and learning from success elsewhere, are important; so are public-private dialogue, industry linkages with education providers and changing the mindsets of youth, the private sector and government to enable a different set of outcomes.

Simply put, education and training need to become more responsive to the needs of the job market, and youth need to see that they have relevant choices that will lead to better economic prospects. And this needs to happen fast.

In this context, the International Finance Corporation and the Islamic Development Bank commissioned an in-depth review of the role of the private sector in education in the Arab world, including surveys involving 1,500 youths and 1,500 employers, and more than 200 interviews with young people and employers in nine Arab countries.

Launched in April 2011, the Education for Employment: Realising Arab youth potential report shows that the private sector can be a powerful force for positive change by complementing public efforts to ensure that the region’s youth gain the right training and skills for the jobs being created.

While the Education for Employment (e4e) report’s focus is on the potential role for the private sector to respond, it also issues a ‘call to action’ recognising the critical roles of the range of stakeholders, including government, civil society, youth, public and private sector education institutions and private employers.

All stakeholders can work together towards solutions – e4e solutions that will step up education for better youth employablity prospects and better prepare young people to participate in and shape the region’s economic reality and future.

The report found that demand for e4e solutions is substantial and yet supply is nascent. It also identified that critical enablers are missing, such as quality and standard-setting, funding mechanisms, internship opportunities and information for young people on the value of different types of education.

e4e Initiative for Arab Youth

The report has set the stage for the IFC’s e4e Initiative for Arab Youth, which aims to demonstrate the viability of private sector investment in employment-driven education, especially post-secondary, and bring public and private partners together to improve the quality and relevance of the skills youth bring into the workforce in order to increase their chances of employment.

Over the next few years, the IFC and its partners in the initiative will follow a strategy of investing in private sector education providers, supporting an enhanced enabling environment, and working with other stakeholders to change mindsets.

These are the three pillars of the e4e Initiative.

Improving education outcomes entails offering youth quality choices that are relevant to the needs of the market. The e4e initiative is focused on finding, creating and scaling up e4e solutions to demonstrate that investing in employment-driven education is not only viable, it also can relatively quickly address the gaps in current programmes and the mismatch between the needs of labour markets and education outcomes.

The IFC is engaging with the private sector to identify and nurture new opportunities for partnerships that embody these objectives.

To be sure, there are many successful private sector providers of quality education in the region; we need more to reach more youth wherever they may be, whether in rural and urban areas, male or female, continuing students or dropouts, and whatever their background.

Yet increasing the provision of quality, relevant education, from university to vocational to work readiness training, can only be nurtured within an enabling environment.

The e4e initiative is also focused on working with partners to identify and address regulation bottlenecks that are hindering investments in employment-driven education; that is, the quantity challenge.

The quality challenge focuses our collective attention on strengthening quality assurance and accreditation systems, for example, or increasing the number of programmes with recognised certifications that would engender greater market confidence in potential new employees.

The IFC and its main partners have undertaken assessments in Jordan and Tunisia that have indicated that focusing on improving the enabling environment, through greater regulatory incentives for investment and quality assurance frameworks – for example, in specific growth sectors such as health care, information technology and tourism – could yield a more robust ecosystem for youth employment and self-employment.

Similar work for Egypt and Morocco is ongoing.

Finally, increasing the quantity and quality of relevant education options can more effectively take hold within the context of changing mindsets on various levels.

Changing mindsets towards the role of the private sector as an important player in education provision; changing mindsets to improve the perception of vocational and workforce-readiness training so that more households (youth and parents) see it as a viable and valuable choice for enhancing employment prospects; changing mindsets to facilitate more collaboration between civil society, educators and employers.

All of these and more are at the core of achieving e4e solutions, and the IFC looks forward to working with its partners and stakeholders to achieve them.

* Dahlia Khalifa is regional head of the e4e Initiative for Arab Youth of the International Finance Corporation, World Bank Group.