Marie Josiane is a young African entrepreneur of 28 years old. Many young people like MJ had spent few years in Universities and decided to start a business to feed their families. Coming from a family of 5, she is the first born but was obliged to drop out of school looking for income to “take care of the family.”

 

Within the current context in her country, the only job opened for young people like MJ are small job. After spending some years not obtaining a decent job, MJ redirected her skills to agro business. Today, she is at the head of a small maize processing company.

 

Such success stories are very few in Africa. MJ is among those youths who go through thick and thin in order to fully get themselves into the professional world. Facilitating job creation and access to decent employment and increases in the productive workforce will lead to higher growth and rising income. Harnessing the demographic dividend presents an opportunity to build resilience of young people and address the root causes of many of the key challenges facing Africa including forced migration, radicalization and violent extremism.

 

Education and skills development was recognized by African Union Head of States as an important pillar to harness the demographic dividend. Improvements in the outcomes of education in Africa will be critical to the continent’s efforts towards harnessing the demographic dividend and serves as one of the most important areas that require strategic investments. Across Africa and within various policy instruments and studies, access, quality, relevance, options for technical and vocational education and training are amongst the challenges facing the educational system.

 

However, and for Marie Josiane, conditions for access to contracts and funding remain a primary challenge and this prevents her from emerging and placing her company at the level of more competitive ones. She is now using decision makers platform to advocate for an amelioration of business environment for other youths who have unexplored potentials and for women especially.