Editor's note: Alexander Ayertey Odonkor is an economic consultant, chartered financial analyst and chartered economist with an in-depth understanding of the economic landscape of countries in Asia and Africa. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

Africa is home to abundant natural resources yet the continent is characterized by a high incidence of poverty, widespread informality and economic growth that has failed to create sufficient decent jobs for the burgeoning youth population. To add insult to injury, these pre-existing challenges have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Highlights of the World Employment and Social Outlook Trends 2021 show that prior to the outbreak of COVID-19, North Africa had the highest unemployment rate among all the 11 sub-regions, and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) also hosted 60 percent of the world's extreme working poor, even though the sub-region accounted for only 12 percent of the global workforce in 2019.

Unfortunately, this penurious condition has been aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic – in SSA alone, COVID-19 resulted in substantial working hour losses equivalent to 13.5 million jobs, pushing over 4.9 million workers and their families into extreme poverty. To be candid, this situation could become worse particularly as the continent's youth population continues to grow rapidly.

This begs the important question: how can African governments provide sufficient decent jobs for the rapidly expanding youth population? Certainly, Africa's bulging youth population has a strong tendency to compound the region's socioeconomic challenges, but there is a bright side to this situation.

In fact, the surest pathway to address this pressing issue is to empower the youth via skills development, an essential investment that will ultimately present Africa with an opportunity to reap enormous social and economic rewards.

However, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) which has been vital in providing the youth with skills for employment or job creation, has been hamstrung by a major challenge that is prevalent across countries on the continent – matching the supply of TVET programs to the demand for skilled labor force in Africa has not been a walk in the park.

Sadly, this challenge has been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disrupted the continuity of TVET. According to a report (2021) prepared by a joint team from the International Labour Organization (ILO), United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Bank, more than 90 percent of the respondents in a survey indicated that TVET schools and training centers have been closed in Africa as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While this is a major setback, it also denotes a turning point that requires immediate actions to be undertaken to recover lost progress and strengthen TVET now and into the future. This could be achieved by regularly designing and implementing TVET models that meet the ever-changing demands of the labor market, ensuring that TVET systems are accessible for the growing youth population across diverse backgrounds in rural and urban areas – an essential move that will promote reskilling and upskilling.

But one may ask; to what extent will this development mitigate youth unemployment? The reality is that, with Africa's informal sector being the major source of employment in the region, enhancing access to high-quality TVET will provide the youth with the required technical expertise needed to boost value-addition in the agriculture sector other related industries; a breakthrough that will create new small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large companies that will generate new jobs, accelerate the continent's economic transformation and foster inclusive growth.

To throw more light on this subject, a report (2020) from the ILO paints a vivid picture of Africa's labor market – a high incidence of poverty in Africa reflects the largely poor quality of work young people and their families are engaged in, mostly in the informal sector. Even though the continent's trajectory of extreme working poverty among youth has declined significantly in the last decade, it is still above the global average. A study (2018) undertaken by ILO shows that a whopping majority of the population aged 15-24 (94.9 percent) with little or no education are informally employed in Africa's agriculture (subsistence farming) sector.

Therefore, if public policies and private involvement are directed towards strengthening access to top-notch TVET, young people working in the informal sector, particularly in rural areas, will be equipped with relevant skills that will increase the number of the highly-skilled professionals the continent needs to stimulate productivity and revitalize local economies.

However, to bring this into fruition will require massive transformation in the designing and implementation of TVET in Africa, leveraging cutting-edge technology and world-class technical expertise to equip the youth in Africa with adequate skills needed for economic transformation; an arrangement that only experienced hands could undertake successfully. To make this possible, China has filled the void by supporting Africa in this field. With comparatively vast experience, China has partnered with UNESCO to strengthen TVET in Africa.

For example, since 2020, the China Funds-in-Trust project (CFIT), a collaboration between China and UNESCO, has been enhancing the capacity of higher technical education institutions in an effort to support these training centers in responding adequately to the skill needs for national development in six African countries; Senegal, Tanzania, Gabon, Uganda, Ethiopia and Côte d'Ivoire.

Apart from these listed countries, China is also carrying out similar projects in other countries in the region; the Ghana News Agency (GNA) reported in 2021 that China has provided $130 million to enhance TVET in Ghana. The investment has been committed to upgrading five technical universities and ten other technical institutions. So far China's involvement has been impactful.

It is now exigent for policymakers and relevant stakeholders to protect this hard-earned progress by improving investment in TVET across all levels of education; understanding that providing high-quality, accessible and employable skills is central to addressing youth unemployment in Africa.

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