Search results

High levels of youth unemployment in Africa, the difficulty of accessing salaried jobs, and the weakness of public institutions in charge of employment issues push youths towards informal channels that can help them find jobs. Among these informal channels, religion has been playing an increasingly important role. Thus, this study aimed to analyse the effects of religion on youths' access to self-employment.

This study used data from the survey on the improvement of youth employment policies in Francophone Africa—conducted in 2018 by the Laboratory for Economic and Social Research and Studies (LARES) of Marien Ngouabi University—to estimate the effects of religion on access to self-employment. The econometric model employed is a two-stage model. Conditional mixed process developed by Roodman (2011) was used to verify the model's robustness.

The results indicate that religion exhibits a positive and significant effect on access to self-employment. This effect is stronger for youths from Muslim communities than for those from other religious communities, compared to youths who do not engage in religious communities.

Based on the current dynamics observed in numerous African countries with respect to employment access, these results imply that religious denominations should be considered when developing policies and programs related to employment, particularly for youths.

The approach followed in this study contributes to the literature predominantly by demonstrating how the network theory approach helps explain, to some extent, the link between religion and access to employment in general and access to self-employment, particularly in developing economies—mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, where the recourse to informal channels of access to self-employment constitutes a significant solution approach for youths.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-02-2023-0097

This paper argues that through information and communication technology (ICT) adoption, the youth will be engaged in all nodes of the agricultural value chains, thereby improving the level of employment and reducing post-harvest losses. The study examines the determinants of ICT adoption among the youth. In addition, it estimates the impact of ICT adoption on youth employment in agriculture towards the actualisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG-8, to promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, productive employment and decent work for all.

The study engages data from Wave 4 (2018/2019) of the Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA). The logit regression, the propensity score matching and the inverse probability weighted regression adjustment are used as the estimation techniques.

The study underscores that educational level, access to electricity, location, age and income are significant determinants of ICT adoption among the youth. The findings also show that the youth's average weekly engagement in agricultural activities is about 24 h. In addition, the result reveals that ICT adoption can increase youth agricultural employment by approximately 21%. The mean difference indicates that those with access to ICT participate in agricultural activities more than their counterparts without ICT access by 29.46%.

One of the limitations of the study is that some of the variables such as insecurity, social protection/safety nets, that may have a significant influence on youth agricultural participation where not included in the model due to data constraint. As a recommendation for further studies, given data availability, such variables should be considered when examining youth-agricultural employment nexus.

Since ICT adoption has a significant impact on agricultural employment, this study proposes improved infrastructure facilities such as reliable power supply, lowering the cost of mobile and data subscriptions and better education facilities should be prioritised at all localities. This will enable the youth to embrace agriculture and help improve their socioeconomic welfare and livelihood.

Using Wave 4 of the LSMS-ISA, logit regression, propensity score matching and the inverse probability weighted regression adjustment, makes this study one of the very few to examine the impact of ICT adoption on agricultural employment among the youth in Nigeria. It implies that this study has provided empirical evidence and expanded the frontiers of knowledge on the extent to which ICT adoption influences youth agricultural employment in Nigeria.

Kenya leads East Africa in creative goods export and enjoys high internet penetration. Therefore, identifying pathways, missed opportunities for accelerating job creation and development in the sector and strategies for mitigating youth-related challenges are essential. This paper therefore aims to examine the effects of digital media and the cultural and creative industry (CCI) on youth employment and economic development.

The document review and analysis data came from 45 scientific and 23 grey literature articles. While the lack of primary data is a study limitation, secondary data were drawn from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Statistics and the 2016–2022 entertainment and media outlook analysis. Microsoft Excel 2021 for Windows was used to analyze quantitative data and generate results.

Since the CCI sector is characterized by limited financial opportunities, low youth participation in the labor force and weak policy frameworks, success in the industry requires key pathways. These include investment in digital-led innovations, developing innovative models, building partnerships with the private sector, strategic investment by government in the potential creative industry sub-sectors and identifying successful scaling-up models.

Information gathered through this study is crucial to counter the youth unemployment challenge and strategy identification, which could be used in skills and capabilities development in the potential creative economy. Future researchers must explore how to apply the proposed creative capacity theoretical lens to inform research in the sector.

South Africa’s youth bulge provides both a potential asset and challenge for economic growth. The potential demographic dividend that this youth bulge represents can only manifest if youth are economically active. With youth unemployment above 51% and 7.6 million youth not in employment, education, or training − large numbers of youth are at-risk for long-term social and economic exclusion. This will only perpetuate structural inequality and poverty. In the context of extended lacklustre economic growth, the capacity of the formal economy to create large-scale employment is limited without active interventions to facilitate successful transition and entry into the labour market. This chapter explores the nature of youth transitions in South Africa. It examines the range of ‘failures’ that hamper successful transitions and presents a framework for conceptualising the role of labour market interventions in overcoming these. It then locates the Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator (Harambee) within the ecosystem of labour market interventions, describing its approach, evolution and the lessons that have emerged for how to support successful youth transitions.

The upsurge in global youth migration remains a major concern for policymakers, politicians and academia at large. Given the emerging interests in youth migration and informal jobs in cities around the world, this study aims to establish the barriers limiting the transition of migrant youths, in informal settings, into formal jobs and the consequent impact on their livelihood.

Leveraging the push-pull approach of the functionalist migration school, this study uses a primary research design. A structured questionnaire was administered among 150 migrant youths who were selected across informal settings in Lagos, using a convenient sampling technique. Then, a structured face-to-face interview was later conducted among 40 selected migrant youths.

There is a skill mismatch between the competence of the youths and the requirements of firms in the formal sector, and the migrant youths are largely disenfranchised from opportunities that flow within certain networks. Another critical constraint includes language barrier, ethnicity and religious biases by certain employers. Most migrant youths are economically better off compared to where they came from, even though they are yet to exit the poverty trap.

This study critically examined the challenges faced by the migrant youth population in Lagos, Nigeria, in their bid to transition from informal employment to formal employment.

This study aims to investigate the global issues of youth unemployment using bibliometric analysis covering the period from 1983 to 2022. There is a dearth of a bibliometric study analysis on unemployment, particularly youth unemployment even at the global level. The present study seeks to fill this gap by exploring the prominent studies related to youth unemployment at the global level.

Using VOSviewer software bibliometric results and the Scopus database, the study uncovered the most frequently cited, prominent and influential authors, as well as the institutions that have worked on youth unemployment and the most prominent keywords published on youth unemployment.

Nearly 80% of the research articles on youth unemployment were published from 2005 to 2022, and a significant increase in publication after 2012 is observed. Based on the published papers, the most studied determinants of youth unemployment are increased levels of regional economic advances, state demographics, relocation, household conditions, regional openness and export/import. Economic freedom, labour market reforms, economic growth, high proportion of part-time employment, active labour market policies, minimum wage norms, extent of bargaining scope and alignment are prominent determinants that reduce unemployment at large and improve labour market performance of youth in particular.

Bibliometric analysis, like the present study, can narrow down the most prominent sources of information on youth unemployment for beginners in this field of research.

This bibliometric study on youth employment assists researchers and policymakers in understanding and summarizing the necessary determinants of youth employment that are already being identified and studied based on practical evidence from the authors’ case study-based research work. The present study raises the issue of youth unemployment at large. It helps in identifying factors in one place and thus new researchers can use it as a starting point for their research on youth unemployment. It helps in providing clustering of factors. It highlighted the significant studies, authors and institutions working in this field.

On social implication, it can be argued that studies on topics related to human resources have a direct impact on society standards. By producing scientific knowledge that aids in the recognition of the complexities of human processes and behaviours, social science research significantly contributes to the enrichment of the community as a whole. When young people are unemployed, it causes social unrest and may increase crime and terrorism, all of which contribute to political instability. Youth unemployment causes psychological illness because of anxiety, alienation and depression. As a result, it causes social instability and necessitates immediate attention in all societies. The present study highlights that although the unemployment rate of youth is significantly higher in underdeveloped countries than the developed countries, their representation in the publication is significantly low. This under-representation of countries shows their lack of commitment to society in working on the issue of youth unemployment.

It is assumed that there are plenty of research studies on unemployment, particularly at the global level. However, various domains of researchers may require a bibliometric kind of analysis wherein they may get an idea about the prominent number of literatures arguing concerning issues at large, in the sense of “focused studies” covering the comprehensive viewpoint on youth unemployment. The paper aimed to emphasize the topic of youth unemployment, its development in the research field and the usefulness of bibliometric analysis in social sciences in general, and youth unemployment in particular.

The learning outcomes for this case study are as follows: learning outcome 1: evaluate the environmental context of Youth Employment Service (YES) and ascertain whether YES is a social enterprise. Students will provide an analysis of what is happening around the business, and why addressing youth unemployment is an urgent matter to address; learning outcome 2: apply basic financial principles to evaluate the basic profit and loss statement of YES. In a business management class, students need to recognise the importance of applying basic financial principles to ensure the financial sustainability of a business. Therefore, the objective is for students to evaluate the basic profit and loss statement in the case’s exhibit. The focus is not necessarily on the numbers, but rather on the insight that students will gain into the organisation’s strengths and development areas; and learning outcome 3: create recommendations by considering the exploitation of existing opportunities and the exploration of new opportunities to innovate. Students should understand the principles of organisational ambidexterity and provide suggestions on how they can be used by organisations to reshape their desirable future.

On 31 March 2022, Leanne Emery Hunter, the chief operating officer of the YES, was considering how YES could increase their impact. Hunter considered how to convince more corporations to sponsor their efforts in creating work experiences for South African youth. In addition to exploiting these efforts that they were already involved with, YES could explore new opportunities to increase their impact, such as focusing on the community hubs and the innovative products they were developing. Expanding YES’s community hubs to serve as support to the youth would require a capital investment in technology and specific skills within the next six months. Hunter, therefore, faced the dilemma of managing the tensions between focusing on YES’s existing offering, which had a social impact, while paying attention to secure their future by focusing on the financial sustainability and expansion of YES. Its ceremonial inauguration in March 2018 was ushered by President of South Africa Cyril Ramaphosa, followed by its registration in October 2018. YES was challenged to look for new ways of creating a proactive growth strategy. YES had a social mission to address youth unemployment, students will, however, need to ascertain whether YES is a social enterprise. The case shares financial results and students have an opportunity to calculate profit and loss and offer recommendations on the financial viability of YES while fulfilling their social mission of contributing to youth employment. Students must give recommendations to resolve the dilemma of Hunter in managing the tension between their existing social impact and the future financial sustainability of the business.

The case is suitable for post-graduate courses in business management in business administration programmes.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

This paper aims to analyse COVID-19’s effects on job loss and job finding rate in Serbia, focusing on groups with already low employment before the pandemic, such as youth, women, low-educated and rural areas.

The authors exploit the panel structure of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) data for Serbia to analyse if the impact of the pandemic on transition probabilities was different for vulnerable groups and their counterparts during the first year of the pandemic.

The results indicate that stagnation in overall employment growth in Serbia during the first year of the COVID-19 crisis resulted from decreases in new hiring rather than increases in job losses. However, trends differed for vulnerable groups. Young workers faced the highest increase in job losses, partly due to their higher shares in informal wage employment. In contrast, decreases in job finding rates were particularly high among low-educated and in rural areas.

After the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, employment opportunities of vulnerable groups further deteriorated, and already existing labour market inequalities were exacerbated. These effects are partially due to policies implemented to mitigate the crisis, which focused on preserving permanent employment while leaving vulnerable workers and groups unprotected.

The authors investigate the annual effects of the first year of the pandemic in a country with a large informal sector and explore the role of vulnerable groups’ job characteristics in transition changes.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the agri-business/small and medium investment schemes (AGSMEIS) in Nigeria. Its special focus is to investigate the impact of the AGSMEIS on youth entrepreneurship development in Nigeria.

This paper adopts a survey research technique, aimed at gathering information from a representative sample of the population, as it is essentially cross-sectional, describing and interpreting the current situation. A total of 1,200 respondents were sampled across the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria.

The results from the use of a combined propensity score matching (PSM) and logit model indicate that AGSMEIS initiative generates significance gains in empowering youths in enterprise development, and if enhanced will help many young people become entrepreneurs.

This suggests that AGSMEIS initiative can facilitate youth's access to credit and help them become owners of small and medium enterprises.

It implies that investing in young people for small and medium enterprises could bring Nigeria into the modern economy and lift sub-Saharan Africa out of poverty.

This research adds to the literature on youth entrepreneurship development’s debate in developing countries. It concludes that targeting the young people in AGSMEIS should form the foundation of public policy for entrepreneurship, poverty alleviation, and economic development.