The Board of Directors of the Africa Development Bank Group (AfDB) on Wednesday, approved combined funding in support of youth employability and integration in growth sectors project in Togo.
The funding approved for Togo comprises of US $9.38-million African Development Fund grant, US $1.87 million Transition Support Facility grant and US $9.12-million Nigeria Trust fund loan.
The project aims to create the conditions for more inclusive economic growth by improving youth employability and promoting entrepreneurship in growth sectors.
As an integrated project which has involved the participation of several Bank departments (human development, agriculture, fragile states, inclusive financing and research), it aims to provide a contextual response to youth integration needs. This will be achieved through support to entrepreneurship in the agricultural value chain. It will also provide solutions to youth underemployment by developing prospecting tools that will adapt the vocational training system to labour market requirements.
The project will specifically target 12 key established SMEs, 1,200 young entrepreneurs (30% of whom are women), 14,200 producers/stockbreeders (40% of whom are women) and 200 women from vulnerable rural villages, 1,000 young people trained in vocational training (VT) centres supported by the project, 40% of whom are women.
The other project targets are four microfinance institutions, one financial institution (FI) and five training centres in the same regions in order to train young people in trades with good prospects.
It is expected to reduce the incidence of poverty from 58.7% (2011) to 49% (2025) as well as reduce the combined unemployment and underemployment rate for young men from 22% (2011) to 16% (2025) and young women from 31.9% (2011) to 26% (2025).
In the medium term, about 19,600 direct jobs (40% of which will be for women) will be created. The beneficiaries’ incomes are expected to rise by 25% by 2020.
The project incorporates an impact analysis of entrepreneurship support which consists in supporting all the agricultural value chain actors who will be empirically evaluated in order to assess the chain’s impact in terms of job and income creation.
This would help to guide public action in widely disseminating the approach.
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