Youth scoping study: Boosting youth employment through infrastructure programming

This is one of four studies focusing on ICED’s priority areas: youth, disability, women’s economic empowerment and violence against women and girls. The terms of reference were developed with the Youth and Education Team in DFID London. The key objective of the study is to assess what work is currently being undertaken by DFID in infrastructure and cities programming, whether these programmes improve outcomes for young people in terms of jobs and training opportunities, and if not, why not.

The scoping study identifies potential entry points to further DFID in pushing for economic opportunities for young people within infrastructure and cities programming. This scoping study also focuses on grey and digital infrastructure to understand how they integrate and enable the economic empowerment of young people.

The study prioritised five DFID Country Offices: countries where an initial literature review identified potential infrastructure and cities case studies and where there are investments in DFID’s Youth Agenda (the ‘trailblazer countries’). In agreement with DFID, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda were invited to participate in the scoping study. The study also looked at interesting examples emerging from other donors or organisations.

Infrastructure is a high-cost investment that, if done well, can contribute towards inclusive growth by facilitating access to basic services and creating productive employment opportunities for the poor and marginalised groups, including young people, both directly and indirectly. However, the scoping study overall found very little evidence of what works in infrastructure and cities programming.

Key findings

• Weak coordination and lack of a joined-up approach within DFID and between Advisors working in different sectors meaning that opportunities for young people are not identified and prioritised;
• A focus on improving trade (addressing bottlenecks) rather than a focus on employment and jobs, particularly for young people;
• A lack of disaggregation by age in infrastructure programmes that do look at employment – there is an underlying assumption that young people are engaged in infrastructure programmes and accessing jobs, as they are considered to be an economically active age group;
• Initiatives to tackle unemployment are often piecemeal with limited time and scope to tackle youth unemployment;
• Infrastructure is attractive to policy makers for its short-term employment generation but its larger and longer-terms impacts through removal of barriers to growth and improved living conditions are often left unexplored.
• The potential of public procurement and DFID’s role in this, to maximise economic opportunities for young people remain underexplored;
• Young people are yet to be recognised as primary stakeholders in I&C programming, and thus, continue to be excluded in decision making processes;
• The provision of training alone is not enough to guarantee transition to work - assessing the content
  (inclusion of soft skills, occupational health and safety, and workers’ rights) and quality of training programmes are both important;
• There is still a focus on supply side through provision of trainings and skills development - both demand and supply side need to be taken more into consideration.