YouthWorks promotes employment in Africa and the Middle East
The YouthWorks digital platform network, which promotes youth employment in the North Africa and Middle East region, is growing. The initiative, developed by Microsoft and Silatech, has now also initiated a project with Udemy.
Youth and employment in Africa and the Middle East
Youth employment is one of the main problems in Africa and the Middle East. The number of young people without work is constantly growing: they were 28.3% of the total in 2012 and will be over 30% by 2018. In particular, some countries suffer more than others: in Egypt the figure touches 38%, in Jordan 33%, in South Africa it reaches 54% (one of the highest in the region). To try to reverse the trend, the number of both public and private interventions and initiatives has increased. Among these, one of the most important and structured is YouthWorks, a project conceived and developed by Microsoft, international IT leader, and Silatech, an association that deals with the promotion of employment.
YouthWorks, a digital platform at the service of young people
The YouthWorks project was launched in 2012 with the objective of creating a virtual meeting place for workers and companies. It offers users a series of services related to youth employment: orientation courses, online training and traineeships. The strong point of YouthWorks lies mainly in the close and extensive network of contacts that it has established and the creation of specific portals in some core countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Palestine, Qatar, Iraq, Kenya, Botswana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Turkey. The latest development is the agreement signed between Microsoft and Udemy, a digital platform that offers online courses. The partnership foresees Udemy making available some of its products to YouthWorks users, thus increasing the training on offer.
