Scalable Employment Models (SEM) Call
The Scalable Employment Model (SEM) call was launched as a Regional Call by CFYE with the main objective of scaling initiatives that can successfully create decent job opportunities for youth in our CFYE countries, and/or replicate it in other countries.
The SEM call provides opportunities to design and/or strengthen mechanisms that will exist beyond the duration of CFYE and that can anchor employment outcomes in the business case of locally operating Small and Growing Businesses.
SEM Objectives
CFYE recognizes the importance and impact that the intermediary business model brings in terms of jobs as well as learning and knowledge share across our portfolio. Having several intermediaries in the portfolio that provide finance and business support to SGBs, CFYE is keen to test more innovative financing mechanisms with greater geographical coverage and larger sized tickets. These go beyond the CFYE grants, Youth@Work Fund loans and the accelerators/financiers we support in several CFYE countries, including Uganda, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Morocco, and Sudan.
SEM call Implementing Partners are organisations with a strong track record and both financial and organizational capacity to execute large scale multi-country intermediary business model initiatives that can provide sizeable tickets, and that can support multiple Small and Growing Businesses in more than one country. In terms of learning and innovation, the SEM call plays a key role in strengthening the CFYE’s learning and knowledge sharing strategy by partnering with other organisations with a strong track record in CFYE’s strategic learning themes.
These partnerships plan to realize more than 44,000 decent jobs for youth across different countries in the African Continent. More than 20,000 of these projected jobs will be newly created jobs. Others will be accomplished through the other CFYE routes: matching and improving.
As women are disproportionately affected by unemployment, over 22.000 jobs (50%) will be filled by young women.
Our Impact
There is a unique role for Acumen to fill the gap and help create sustainable livelihoods for some of the most vulnerable populations across East and West Africa, particularly youth and women. We will achieve this by identifying impactful businesses that serve low-income communities and creating a roadmap for companies to reduce the barriers to employment for women and youth.
Balloon Ventures is building the world’s first missing middle financial institution dedicated to creating good jobs. With this second round of support from CFYE, we will further scale our model in Uganda as well as support entrepreneurs in Kenya. We aim to create more than 4500 decent jobs for Ugandan and Kenyan youth.
The Challenge Fund for a Just Transition (CFJT) is a consortium led by Hivos and implemented by seven intermediary partners, comprising Business Development Support Organisations, Think Tanks, and VC Firms in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, and the Netherlands. CFJT aims to respond to the urgent need for quality jobs for youth in North Africa.
Mercy Corps and BFA Global are accelerating inclusive jobtech platforms in Africa. We utilize the potential of technology to create, match and improve jobs for 15,000 youth while building an enabling ecosystem to ensure jobtech equitably provides decent work for millions of Africans. The Jobtech Alliance will accelerate early-stage jobtech small and growing businesses (SGBs) and stimulate product innovation and market expansion in more established jobtech SGBs.