Rockefeller, Dalberg move against job crisis

Rockefeller Foundation has decided to intervene in Africa’s unemployment challenge and therefore announced a meeting of stakeholders to brainstorm on how to alleviate the crisis.

The Foundation, a world-renowned charity, is facilitating the meeting with Dalberg Group, an organisation that provides strategic, policy, and investment advice to the leadership of key global institutions.

They are to focus on advancing initiatives that recognize the role of data science in addressing systemic challenges linked to unemployment and the future of work in Africa.

Africa is home to the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population with projections of more than 375 million young people in the job market by 2030.

Dalberg and the Rockefeller Foundation have found that within a few decades, this demographic dividend will increase the size of Africa’s workforce to more than a billion people, making it the largest in the world.

However, the gap between the number of work seekers and the number of jobs available today is significant and requires deeper, more integrated solutions. Both Dalberg and the Foundation agree that the skills required in today’s labor market may not be the skills required tomorrow.

“At the same time, the proliferation of data, advances in data science and technological innovation offer tremendous opportunity. Across the continent, initiatives focused on building digital skills, jobs, and industries of the future are well underway,” the two organisations said in a joint statement.

As a way to capitalize on the rich innovation in data science across the continent, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Dalberg Group hosted the ‘Data Science for Improved Labor Markets in Africa’ event in Kigali, Rwanda, this May.

The event preceded another high profile event dubbed the ‘Transform Africa Summit’, which brings together leading policy makers and industry actors from across the continent and will focus on ‘boosting Africa’s Digital Economy’.

“Greater access to data and advancements in data science hold the potential to allow to more deeply understand the systemic challenges that drive unemployment.

However, translating these advancements into viable solutions and positive impact at scale requires collaboration at the intersection of technologists, policy makers, industry, and civil society,” said Robin Miller, Partner and Global Digital Lead at Dalberg Advisors.

The Data Science for Labor Markets event brought together 27 policy-makers, data scientists, funders, researchers, and industry actors from more than a dozen countries in order to build and enhance existing data science initiatives that tackle the deep systematic labor market challenges in Africa.

“Creating, testing, and integrating impactful data-driven solutions requires collaboration across government, the private sector, and civil society.

“We believe that data and technology hold the key to solving the world’s most challenging issues, including those facing Africa’s labor market,” explained Zia Khan, Vice President of Innovation at The Rockefeller Foundation.’’