Youth in Africa

Acting Director, Department of Humanitarian and Social Affairs at ECOWAS Friday said that over 400 million Africans have been affected by employment crisis which has been manifested as a poverty crisis.

Henrietta Didigu made this statement on behalf of the acting commissioner of human development and gender at the ECOWAS ministers of public service conference at Lagoonda, Aberdeen, Freetown.

"Unemployment is now a key challenge which must be addressed in order to deepen our regional integration process," she said. Didigu said in spite of paucity of employment and unemployment data, reasonable proxies exist to point of a growing massive employment crisis. "For example youth unemployment ranges between 40-60% for most countries of the region, extreme poverty ranges between 16%-50% in member states. West African economies fail to create enough jobs for new labour market entrants," Didigu said.