Youth employment and sustainable development in North Africa

Abstract

This is a comprehensive report on youth employment and sustainable development that identifies and enumerate best practices, historical evidence of lessons learned and an agenda for the future. It is mixed methods research that combines quantitative and qualitative research to rigorously explore and explain the fundamental causes of youth unemployment and the elusiveness of sustainable development in North African countries. The objective is to uncover explanations and motivations for the persistently high rates of unemployment and lack of sustainable development through a combination of library research, semi-structured techniques including interviews of international and domestic non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as businesses in the private sector, scholars and experts on youth employment and education. The focus is on providing a comparative analysis of the North African countries, which share the experience of significant youth unemployment issues and elusiveness of sustainable development. Relevant information and data are presented from desk research drawing on relevant country reports, including those produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), ECA, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Bank, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and journal articles in scholarly peer-reviewed journals.