Sub-Saharan youth and the vicious circle of professional integration

In 2020, as I was looking into the educational and professional backgrounds of some young Sahelian women seeking access to vocational training with the aim of getting out of unemployment, I was particularly struck by two cases. 
A year or two earlier, both women had benefited from a 12-month training course in catering and a 10-day introduction to entrepreneurship. However, their professional integration in the restaurant business had been abandoned because "It wasn't working!” Therefore, they wanted to benefit from a new, more "promising" training program.
 
Their cases brought to mind situations I had previously observed many times over the years, not only in Mali but also in many other countries in the sub-region – although I hadn't stopped to analyze them before. Indeed, I had noticed that young people applying for vocational training rarely lacked previous training (or upskilling), and, in many cases, they also had experience of professional integration (albeit often in precarious jobs).

This time, however, the situation of these young Sahelian women led to a realization: young people seeking to enter the job market were encountering a very common phenomenon, which was causing them to multiply their training opportunities – often without the expected success.
 
Gradually, this phenomenon gives rise to what I now see as a vicious circle of professional integration with various phases, a few key aspects of which I'll briefly share with you:

•  Unemployed: Whether they are actually unemployed or employed in precarious jobs (or jobs they consider precarious), young sub-Saharans see themselves as unemployed and are logically looking to improve their situation.

• Waiting for a job or vocational training opportunity: In their quest to improve their situation, the search for a job is, of course, the preferred route. But when they feel that no valid integration option is available, the short-term vocational training opportunities on offer – for example, as part of development projects – are often regarded as interesting alternatives by young "unemployed" people.

• Training: Once given the opportunity to access training, "unemployed" young people feel relieved and generally show great commitment to their training.

• Launch of job search or self-employment: Once training is completed, 
  • young people aiming for employment experiment with finding a job in their new field of expertise;
  • young people starting out in self-employment experiment with finding customers and generating income (as long as the basic tools are available to them).

 

• Soon after completing their training:
  • If job seekers make a negative assessment of the opportunities for integration and/or the impact of their integration attempts, they will feel that the professional field in which they trained is ultimately not promising.
  • If self-employed individuals make a negative assessment of the financial results of the activity and/or of the problems to be solved in their situation, they will feel that the vocational field in which they trained is ultimately not promising.

 

• Discouragement and abandoning the project: Once the young people who have completed their training have made a negative assessment of their integration efforts, they often conclude that the activity for which they trained was ultimately not as promising as they had hoped. This conviction obviously arouses negative emotions, gradually leading them to pursue their integration objective with less commitment, eventually committing to it only occasionally or even abandoning it altogether.

 

• Unemployed: With the attempts at integration into the workforce having been abandoned (or almost abandoned), young people once again consider themselves "unemployed" and start looking for a new opportunity: they have come full circle. 

 
Of course, I'm not claiming that this vicious circle is unique to sub-Saharan Africa. Perhaps those of you working in Asia or other parts of the world have observed a similar phenomenon? In any case, the knowledge of this vicious circle naturally prompts us to look for ways to break it. And these means do exist.
 
Indeed, insofar as neither the quality of the training course(s) taken nor the areas in which the training was offered appear to be problematic, good integration support services are likely to break this cycle – particularly by ensuring that beneficiaries are supported in such a way that they do not come to – wrongly – negatively evaluate their integration process (or attempted integration process). Finding a job can take time, and integration via self-employment does not quickly lead to an attractive income.
 
I'll stop here for today, just long enough to point out that:

• If you are interested in seeing how young people in the Sahel are caught in this vicious circle, I invite you to read the previous article: "Development cooperation and training projects: three experiences of young sub-Saharan to illustrate the importance of providing support for professional integration" (https://www.cooeva.ch/blog1/february-22nd-2023?lang=en).
•  An audio discussion on this theme will be available shortly. I'll let you know!
• Of course, I'm also available to confer on the subject in person.

Have a wonderful summer!

​Catherine Ukelo, July 2023