Insight
Youth Employment Programs: What the Evidence Says
D4Act's systematic review of over 40 youth employment programme evaluations conducted across Sub-Saharan Africa over the past decade reveals a clear pattern: programmes that combine skills training with capital (grants, loans, or in-kind support) consistently outperform skills-only interventions by 2-3x on income measures. Critically, the strongest predictor of long-term enterprise survival is not the technical skills training itself, but the mentorship and post-training follow-up support that accompanies it.
Combined training + capital + mentorship programmes show income gains of 25-40% at 18-month follow-up, compared to 8-15% for skills training alone. Mentorship is the multiplier that makes the difference.