Youth & Entrepreneurship
Expected outcome
- Financing opportunities expanded for adaptation action by youth
- Job opportunities in climate change and adaptation expanded for youth
- Climate change adaptation innovations by Youth/SMEs increased
- Technical and vocational capacities of youth in adaptation and resilience expanded for 1 million African youth
- Youth capacity for effective participation and leadership in adaptation and resilience building strengthened
- Adaptation jobs mainstreamed in key MDBs adaptation projects
- 1 million youth trained and given start-up tools
one million youth
2025 Goal
To support one million youth with entrepreneurship skills and job creation. This pillar aims at creating millions of new jobs in climate adaptation, half of them for women. The program supports developing skills and knowledge on adaptation, promoting equality and equal opportunities, building the entrepreneurial capacity of African youth, and facilitating access to funding and mentorship to youth-led businesses, half of which will be women-led, in the adaptation space.
Description
This pillar aims to unlock the untapped potential of the youth in Africa to drive resilience and green enterprise. The vision is to promote large-scale sustainable job creation by 2025 through youth entrepreneurship and innovation for action in climate adaptation. This pillar’s activities are built across the following business lines:
- strengthening the environments that support youth-led climate adaptation entrepreneurship, and youth participation in adaptation policies
- scaling up youth innovations for climate action
- building the capacity of the youth for employability, and unlocking access to finance
- mainstreaming adaptation jobs into the operations and projects of multilateral development banks.
The youth pillar has a sustained joint vision to unlock a further $3 billion in credit for adaptation action for innovative youth-owned enterprises. It has so far funded entrepreneurs across the continent – with a gender mainstreaming target of 50% – to scale up their adaptation businesses as part of the African Youth Adaptation Solutions Challenge (YouthADAPT Challenge).
The sponsored adaptation solutions cut across the agriculture and waste management sectors, and across the enterprises that are addressing the climate challenges faced on the ground locally by vulnerable communities in Africa. Some have seen their revenues rise by up to 50% since joining the accelerator, some have doubled their production capacity, and others are entering new markets.
The AAAP is supporting the mainstreaming of adaptation jobs for the youth in three African Development Bank-financed projects:
- In the digital and creative enterprise programme in Nigeria, the facility has helped to identify opportunities to create climate adaptation-aligned jobs, aiming for 165,600 direct jobs and 1,674,000 indirect jobs over five years.
- The youth enterprise development and capacity-building project aims to enhance employability and job creation for young women and men aged 18–35 years in South Sudan, creating at least 1,600 jobs and training at least 900 youths in business development and adaptation entrepreneurship.
- The Nigeria special agro-industrial processing zones programme expects to accelerate the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices to create at least 150,000 direct and indirect jobs.
