Expert Group Meeting on Strategies for Creating Urban Youth Employment: Solutions for Urban Youth in Africa Overview of Strategies for Urban Job Creation for Young People NAIROBI, 22 June 2004

Context of Youth Employment More than 1 billion people today are between 15 and 25 years of age and nearly 40 per cent of the world’s population is below the age of 20. Eighty-five per cent of these young people live in developing countries where many are especially vulnerable to extreme poverty. At the same time, the rate of urbanization is by far the highest in developing countries, and by 2015 it is expected that developing countries will account for more than 75% of the world’s urban population. The International Labour Office estimates that 88.2 million young people aged 15-24 are unemployed in the world today, accounting for nearly half (47 per cent) of the 185.9 million unemployed persons globally. However, these unemployment figures are only the tip of the iceberg, and hundreds of millions more young people are working long hours for low pay, struggling to eke out a living in the informal economy. There are an estimated 59 million additional young people between 15 and 17 years of age who are engaged in hazardous forms of work. Young people actively seeking to participate in the world of work are two to three times more likely than older generations to find themselves unemployed. While these figures are sobering, we should not necessarily view the fact that the vast majority of the world’s young people live in developing countries as a liability, but rather as a