Africa’s future is often defined by stark numbers:
- 60% of Africans are under age 25.
- 10 million youth enter the labor market every year.
- By 2030, one in three new entrants to the global workforce will be African.
To absorb this talent, Sub-Saharan Africa must create 15 million formal jobs annually. However, current growth patterns generate only 3 million, leaving a staggering deficit of 12 million jobs every year. This employment gap is now colliding with the global climate emergency, creating a unique opportunity: green enterprises. By aligning job creation with sustainability: from climate-smart farming apps to circular economy startups, Africa can solve youth unemployment and environmental resilience simultaneously.
Navigating the Business Runway
While African youth are innovative and entrepreneurial, “ideas” alone cannot bridge the employment gap. To become engines of job creation, enterprises must be supported as they move through a rigorous business runway: from initial concept to growth, and finally to maturity.
To successfully scale operations and expand markets, these ventures require a specific ecosystem of support:
- Incubation & Acceleration: Programs that refine raw innovation into scalable business models.
- Patient Capital: Financing designed to sustain enterprises through the high-risk “middle stages” of development.
- Market Linkages: Stronger connections to regional and global value chains.
- Policy Incentives: Regulatory frameworks that support enterprises to scale sustainably and create formal jobs.
Currently, SMEs account for approximately 30% of employment but only 17% of GDP. This disparity highlights a massive opportunity: if we can help SMEs overcome financing and regulatory constraints, they can become the primary drivers of continental and job creation.
The Role of Strategic Communications
Strategic communications can play a vital role in sensitising policymakers and industry leaders to the urgency of building scalable green enterprises. Data storytelling can frame abstract statistics into human stories that create imperatives for organisations and policymakers to act. Agenda-setting through opinion editorials, campaigns and strategic convenings can ensure that enterprise scaling is elevated to national and regional policy agendas.
Catalysts for Change: Jacob’s Ladder Africa
Bridging this gap requires intentional, targeted intervention. Organizations like Jacob’s Ladder Africa (JLA) are leading the charge by supporting the development and scaling of green enterprises that create employment, deliver climate solutions and strengthen economic resilience in Africa.
Through greenlabs®, JLA’s proprietary incubator program, the organization is providing a dedicated environment to nurture, equip, and empower young Africans. By offering the knowledge, tools, and networks necessary to build sustainable ventures, JLA ensures that Africa’s greatest resource – its youth – is empowered to build the scalable solutions the world needs most.
Africa’s youth and the climate crisis are usually framed as standalone threats. Yet, green enterprises can be scaled with intentionality and become the engine of Africa’s economic transformation.
