Nigeria and five other African countries have been pencilled down to benefit from The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation (TCCAF) $4.5 million youth empowerment initiative that will provide life skills training, business skills training and access to employment and mentoring for 25,000 young Africans.
This disclosure was made at the weekend at the World Economic Forum on Africa 2015, in Cape Town South Africa.
The Youth Empowered for Success (YES!) program will empower marginalized youth in six African countries and will leverage technology and strategic partnerships to accelerate and scale the initiative to provide opportunities to many more youth across the continent.
The YES! initiative will be introduced in Kenya, Tunisia and South Africa in phase one before being implemented in Liberia, Nigeria and Uganda through TCCAF and implementing partners Mercy Corps, Microsoft, Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator and Kuza Biashara.
The programme is expected to address critical development and life skills for 18-35 year old unemployed and underemployed young Africans, and provide access to sustainable economic opportunities created through employment or entrepreneurship.
During the first three years TCCAF aims to provide proof of concept for a scalable and replicable model with the ambition to reach 500,000 youth by 2020 by establishing strong partnerships with private sector, NGO, government and civil society organisations.
Nathan Kalumbu, Chairman, The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation, said “the potential to connect young people with the right opportunities to build better lives while strengthening their communities is incredibly compelling but harnessing the incredible energy and ambition of a young and growing population will be critical to Africa’s future economic advancement.”
He added that “over 10-12 million young Africans are entering the workforce each year yet less than half this number of employment opportunities are currently available. The YES! initiative underscores our commitment to identifying a sustainable long-term solution for youth economic empowerment and creating opportunities that will help overcome this employment gap.”
“Today 40 million African youth are out of work, and young Africans continue to enter the workforce at a faster rate than jobs are created,” said Neal Keny-Guyer, Chief Executive Officer of Mercy Corps.
By partnering with The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation, Mercy Corps he said will be “looking forward to helping even more young people in Africa find employment and build long-term financial stability for themselves and for their families.”
Louis Otieno, Director, Legal & Corporate Affairs, of Microsoft 4Afrika Initiative on his part said their “aim through this partnership is to promote employment opportunities, career guidance and enterprise development for young people.”