Youth unemployment across Africa and the Middle East is a complex and urgent challenge. With over 60% of the population under the age of 25, the region faces a demographic surge that, if not matched with economic opportunity, risks deepening cycles of unemployment, underemployment, and exclusion, particularly for women and marginalised youth.
Each year, more young people enter the labour market than there are jobs to absorb them, especially in less developed economies. Formal employment remains out of reach for most: In 2023, only about one in five youth in low-income countries could expect to secure regular paid employment and nearly three-quarters of young adults in Sub-Saharan Africa remained trapped in insecure work, underscoring the persistent gap between demographic potential and economic opportunity.
Despite growing interest in youth employment programmes, many interventions remain fragmented and overly focused on supply-side solutions such as upskilling. While important, this narrow focus often overlooks the demand-side of the employment equation. In other words, what are the requirements, commercial motivations, and constraints faced by employers who ultimately create and sustain jobs?
This highlights a critical gap: the need for more evidence and investment in programmes that directly engage employers and respond to labour market realities with demand-driven solutions.
CFYE seeks to address this gap through the Pathways to Employment (PTE) Learning Series. Drawing on standardised data collected over 6 years of implementation and targeted case study research with selected partners, the PTE series aims to generate practical lessons on how different business models can create and sustain decent work for youth.
Paper 3: Agribusinesses
Agriculture remains one of the main sources of employment for youth across Africa and the Middle East, yet most young people remain concentrated in informal, low-productivity roles with limited stability or prospects for advancement. At the same time, Agribusinesses – described in this paper as enterprises engaged in agricultural production, aggregation, processing, and support services – hold potential to generate meaningful employment opportunities for youth.
For CFYE, Agribusinesses represent a critical pathway for inclusive job creation, particularly in rural economies. By integrating young people into structured value chains as employees and entrepreneurs, these businesses can help shift youth from informal work into more stable and productive roles. However, Agribusinesses face persistent barriers on both the supply and demand sides of the labour market. On the supply side, young people often lack access to land, finance, technical skills, and reliable market linkages, which limits their ability to create or access better quality, more productive roles. Young women often face additional constraints, including restrictive social norms, unequal land rights, care responsibilities, mobility limitations, and reduced access to finance, training, and networks.
On the demand side, Agribusinesses operate in volatile environments characterised by climate risks, thin profit margins, fragmented supply chains, and limited access to working capital. These factors constrain their ability to scale operations and invest in workforce development. Against this backdrop, the paper shows how Agribusinesses have potential to be powerful engines of youth employment when their commercial growth and workforce needs are supported together. Strengthening value chains, improving access to finance, investing in workforce skills, and enabling inclusive business practices will be essential for unlocking the full potential of Agribusinesses to generate sustainable and scalable employment opportunities for young people.
