Learning Brief: Job Quality & Decency

We can’t focus on job creation without job quality. To determine which jobs would be “good enough to count”, we first developed minimum standards and a scoring rubric. However, when we tried to operationalise these tools, we faced challenges, especially in measuring and applying a living wage benchmark. The living wage is a gold standard that all employers should aim for, but its value varies considerably in different contexts and can be difficult to calculate and monitor. Furthermore, in many of the contexts where we work, most workers do not earn a living wage, making it unrealistic as a universal minimum standard for CFYE. This especially holds for self-employed, part-time, or gig workers.

The world of work is also changing, and employment standards are still catching up. Some countries have recently updated minimum wage regulations, while others haven’t been updated in decades. In addition to wages, other aspects, such as work-life balance, job security, and opportunities for development, are also crucial for youth. Given the variation in labour standards by country and the diversity of jobs in our portfolio, we realised that our decent work threshold needed to be revisited. Therefore we evolved our strategy, splitting the concept between decent work standards (defined by ILO’s four core labour standards and applicable to all CFYE-supported projects and jobs) and the CFYE’s job quality improvement framework – for projects aiming to improve broader aspects of job quality (wages, working conditions, job security). This new approach enables us to uphold universal minimum standards for decent work while also accommodating contextually-relevant definitions, interventions, and measurement approaches focused on enhancing job quality. These efforts are informed by local labour laws, sector-specific standards, and/or the valuable perspectives of youth regarding what truly matters.

Learning Brief: Meaningful Youth Participation

CFYE strives to create employment opportunities for underserved youth, particularly young women, who often face underemployment and poor working conditions. Through scoping research, we identify these underserved youth and design projects to reach them.

We have taken a frontrunner role in embedding Meaningful Youth Participation (MYP) in its private sector-driven work. To support our partners in understanding and contributing to youth’s actual needs and aspirations, we piloted a youth-led approach via “youth champions”: one-year national volunteers whose mandate is to bring a youth perspective across CFYE and partners using youth-friendly methods. These youth champs conducted youth-action research and helped shape some of the CFYE’s key activities. Based on the success and learnings of the 2021 Youth Champs pilot, the CFYE Youth Champs initiative was scaled-up and formalised in 2022.

In addition, 16 Youth Champions and 4 Youth Experts from Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and Ethiopia were engaged as in-house experts in 2022. The network creates a win-win situation for both CFYE and Youth Champs, benefiting from the youth perspective while supporting the personal and professional development of the Youth Champs.

Tool for youth champions

In addition to engaging designated youth champions, we also designed and tested a self-assessment tool for our partners to discover how to better integrate a youth and gender lens in their businesses. It is framed around three components: attracting, selecting, and retaining youth talent, and includes specific building blocks, including marketing and community-based outreach, youth-inclusive recruitment, young professional development opportunities, peer networks, gender-inclusive practices, and youth-led benefits. Based on scoring in the matrix, partners may adapt their projects to improve their youth and female focus.

Learning Brief: Selecting The Right Partners

Support intermediaries to finance and scale small and growing businesses (SGBs).

We recognise that small and growing businesses (SGBs) are the engine of job creation in our focus countries. However, it would be inefficient for CFYE to fund most SGBs directly due to our co-funding requirement and limited capacity to manage and monitor smaller grants. Therefore, we collaborate with intermediaries that support other enterprises and entrepreneurs with business support, entrepreneurship development, finance, training, and/or job-matching support.

The Challenge Fund for Youth Employment’s Learning & Innovation Agenda is directly aligned with the Fund’s overarching impact objective of generating 230,000 decent jobs for young women and men through private sector engagement. The Learning Agenda serves a dual purpose: to capture, analyse and synthesise insights emerging from programme implementation and to contribute to a robust evidence base on effective private sector approaches to youth employment.

CFYE’s Learning & Innovation Agenda articulates critical knowledge priorities and evidence gaps concerning private sector pathways to youth employment. Central to this vision is understanding which business models or “pathways to employment” demonstrate the highest potential to create jobs, match youth to employment opportunities and improve job quality and sustainability.  

Beyond internal programme optimisation, the learning agenda functions as an evidence-building mechanism for the broader youth employment ecosystem. It supports donors, policymakers, private sector actors and implementers to clarify their strategic choices and investment priorities. 

By 2026, CFYE aims to be positioned as a recognised thought leader on private sector-driven youth employment by generating data-driven and actionable insights related to: 

• Scalable business models, including green and digital pathways 

• Job quality measurement and improvement 

• Inclusion of young women and marginalised youth 

• Effective knowledge exchange across the ecosystem