The African Development Bank (ADB), in partnership with the International Labour Organization (ILO), presented on Tuesday 15 July the “Youth, Jobs and Skills Marker System”, a system designed to systematically integrate employment, training and entrepreneurship components into each of its projects. This mechanism is based on a real-time digital dashboard to assess youth priorities in key sectors such as agriculture, energy, education or infrastructure. Currently in the pilot phase, its full deployment is announced for 2026.

Launched under the name “System of markers for youth, jobs and skills”, this system is part of the Bank's Ten-Year Strategy, which places African youth at the heart of its priorities, and aims to maximize the impact of every dollar invested and to transform the continent's demographic potential into a lever. of development. This system ensures that all funded projects — in sectors such as agriculture, transport, transport, energy, water or education — systematically incorporate components that promote the employability of young people, support entrepreneurship and develop skills in line with market needs

“The Youth, Employment and Skills Marker System aims to give African youth a fully active role and a voice in building sustainable economies and creating jobs, rather than limiting them to being mere beneficiaries of youth programmes,” said Beth Dunford , Vice President in charge of Agriculture and Human and Social Development at the Bank. “The transformation of our practices and systems marks a new step towards ensuring that our investments have a positive impact on young women and men in Africa.

This integrated system is based on three major axes:

Young people: supporting the development of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises run by young people through targeted investments and better integration into Bank operations.

Skills: expanding access to practical, market-oriented training and apprenticeship programs to improve career opportunities.

Jobs: ensure that Bank-financed projects generate sustainable jobs, in particular by focusing on the development of skills that promote employability and the promotion of youth-led businesses in strategic value chains.

Each year, between 10 and 12 million young Africans enter the labor market, which offers only three million formal jobs per year. Faced with this gap, the Bank is making youth entrepreneurship a priority and intends to mobilize more partnerships with the private sector in order to develop training adapted to the needs of industries and accelerate job creation over the next decade.

“This initiative represents a major step forward, as it allows us to make a concrete contribution to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8, which is dedicated to access to decent work for all,” said Peter van Rooij, Director of Multilateral Partnerships and Cooperation at the United Nations. development at the ILO. “It also offers the ILO the opportunity to support the Bank in orienting its financing towards investments that generate more jobs and better working conditions over the long term.

Building on the success of the Bank's Gender Marker System and its online dashboard, which assesses projects in terms of their contribution to gender equality and the empowerment of women, this new system is based on a digital platform that allows staff and consultants to access data in real-time for the preparation of country strategies, mid-term reviews, annual reports, as well as for monitoring and reporting on skills, entrepreneurship and youth employment outcomes