Gender and Youth Livelihoods Programming in Africa: Building Knowledge to Improve Practice

Gender plays an important role in shaping young people’s transitions into work. In order to be effective, interventions aimed at supporting young people’s access to employment or entrepreneurship opportunities should be tailored to address gendered barriers.

This report explores the gender-related barriers faced by young women and young men, reviews the many approaches that programs take to confront these barriers and tries to establish whether and how these approaches have been successful. It finds that programming with gender-responsive components can have positive effects on gender equality in relation to participation, performance and opportunities. Evidence on the impacts of gender-responsive programming – and on long-term change – is, however, lacking.