Private Sector Initiative

The Private Sector Initiative (PSI) is project of YEN’s subregional office for West Africa. The PSI is a multi-stakeholder platform for business action on youth employment supported by the United Kingdom’s Department of Work and Pensions. The PSI aims to strengthen the role that business in West Africa can play in enhancing employment opportunities for youth. To achieve this task, the Initiative is divided into three areas of action.

1. Knowledge development

This stage seeks to take stock of existing and planned business sponsored youth employment interventions in the subregion and to encourage private sector representatives and/or their implementing partners to provide information on their activities. The goal of this stage is to contribute to the knowledge base of business intervention into youth employment and to share experiences and lessons learned between business sponsored youth employment projects.

• Brochure: YEN West Africa’s Private Sector Initiative - (pdf 1.3 mb)
• Case study paper: “Building the Case for Business Collaboration on Youth Employment: Good Practice from West Africa” - (pdf 2 mb)

2. Network building

The PSI has built a network of private sector representatives and civil society organizations to advocate for and share experiences on business support for youth employment. The Network will seek to engage YEN partner organizations such as government agencies for youth employment, national NGOs and multilateral business institutions such as the Global Compact and Business Action for Africa (BAA) by drawing on their expertise and business networks The goal of this stage is to build consensus and support for practical action on the issue of youth employment.

Activities under this stage have included:

• Final Report: West Africa Regional Workshop: Business Collaboration for Youth Employment - (561 kb)
• Final Report Roundtable panel during the Investment and Finance Salon: Contribution of the Private Sector to Youth Employment (French - pdf 640 kb) (English - pdf 538 kb)

   

3. Brokering partnerships

Once the evidence has been gathered and the network created, YEN’s office for West Africa will work closely with its network partners to match business interests in the field of youth employment with existing or possible intersectoral partnerships on youth employment in the subregion. The goal of this stage is to broker new partnerships to support the replication or scaling up of youth employment projects. YEN’s Competitive Grant Scheme aims to support the development of private sector sponsored partnerships.