“If you’re going to come up with solutions to the problems of Africa don’t come up with policies and programmes that don’t include the voices of its young people and don’t speak to their lived experience” says Ms. Andile Madonsela. 

Andile was speaking as part of a panel brought together to discuss an exciting new project hosted by the Pan-African Collective for Evidence (PACE) in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation. The project – the Youth Employment Evidence and Insights Hub  (YEEIH) – is a one-year initiative that aims to deliver rigorous, timely, contextualised and relevant evidence on a range of issues related to youth employment in Africa. 

Youth unemployment is a very large, visible and growing problem across Africa. It has a profound impact on young people and their ability to contribute to economic growth and development. More than one in four young people in Africa – around 72 million – are not in employment, education or training: two-thirds of them are young women. 

The 45 minute webinar, broadcast on the second day of Africa Evidence Week,  brought together four speakers from Ethiopia, South Africa, Cameroon, Ghana and Senegal who are all part of the partnership. Andile leads the Youth Reference Group that is central to the project. She argues forcefully that meaningful inclusion of young people should be non-negotiable in any initiative that is meant to benefit them.

The webinar ‘lifted the lid’ on both the range of jobs that exist in the evidence ecosystem in Africa, and some of the winding professional journeys taken to reach them. 

“I have never heard anyone say they actively wanted to follow an evidence career from the outset!” says Firmaye Wolde Bogale.. Firmaye is a researcher and Director of Knowledge Translation at the Ethiopian Public Health Institute,  and a recent winner of AEN Africa Evidence Leadership Awards.  She began working in a clinical setting as a practitioner, then chose to follow a research path and ‘stumbled’ across evidence-informed decision-making (EIDM). “There are many big problems in the world that you can see but you cannot solve; working in the EIDM space allows you to work on solutions in many different ways,” she says.

Andile agrees: “You don’t need to be a lawyer or a doctor (to work in the evidence space). The Africa Evidence Network is a good place to follow different career paths around evidence.” For Bruce Chidi, a research specialist working in South Africa, his search to connect with others to hear and tell more positive stories about Africa led him to the Evidence Leadership Mentorship programme run by PACKS (Africa). “This set me on a path that has brought me here,” he explains.

The importance of the project’s emphasis on both youth and indigenous knowledge was emphasised by all panellists. “The idea that it is done by Africans for Africans means that when we are looking for evidence to answer specific questions, we will respect and have some insight of context and content”, explains Bruce. For Nkululeko Tshabalala, Project Manager working in PACE, it provides an opportunity to ‘generate meaningful solutions in real contexts and in real time’.

Andile agrees. “Indigenous ways of knowing is something unique,” she says, and should be respected and credited when we try to map ‘what is known’ about a subject. She explains: ”My grandmother has unique ways of treating babies who are sick that are not scientific – but they work.” 

The project began in February 2024 and will run initially for one year.  The evidence generated will be used to inform the delivery of the Mastercard Foundation’s Young Africa Works Strategy which aims to get 30 million young Africans into dignified and fulfilling work by 2030.