Empirical Review of Youth-Employment Programs in Ghana

Monica Lambon-Quayefio; Thomas Yeboah; Nkechi S. Owoo; Marjan Petreski; Catherine Koranchie; Edward Asiedu; Mohammed Zakaria; Ernest Berko; Yaw Nsiah Agyemang

arXiv · 2311.06048

Empirical Review of Youth-Employment Programs in Ghana

Monica Lambon-Quayefio·Thomas Yeboah·Nkechi S. Owoo·Marjan Petreski·Catherine Koranchie·Edward Asiedu·Mohammed Zakaria·Ernest Berko·Yaw Nsiah Agyemang

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Abstract

Ghana-s current youth unemployment rate is 19.7%, and the country faces a significant youth unemployment problem. While a range of youth-employment programs have been created over the years, no systematic documentation and evaluation of the impacts of these public initiatives has been undertaken. Clarifying which interventions work would guide policy makers in creating strategies and programs to address the youth-employment challenge. By complementing desk reviews with qualitative data gathered from focus-group discussions and key informant interviews, we observe that most youth-employment programs implemented in Ghana cover a broad spectrum that includes skills training, job placement matching, seed capital, and subsidies. Duplication of initiatives, lack of coordination, and few to non-existent impact evaluations of programs are the main challenges that plague these programs. For better coordination and effective policy making, a more centralized and coordinated system is needed for program design and implementation. Along the same lines, ensuring rigorous evaluation of existing youth-employment programs is necessary to provide empirical evidence of the effectiveness and efficiency of these programs.

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Monica Lambon-Quayefio, Thomas Yeboah, Nkechi S. Owoo, Marjan Petreski, Catherine Koranchie, Edward Asiedu, Mohammed Zakaria, Ernest Berko, Yaw Nsiah Agyemang. 2023-11-10. Empirical Review of Youth-Employment Programs in Ghana. https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.06048

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