World Data Lab and Mastercard Foundation Expand Youth Employment Analytics Across West Africa
Nairobi, Kenya | April X, 2025 World Data Lab has announced that it will be partnering with the Mastercard Foundation to scale and deepen its youth employment analytics across Africa with a focus on West Africa.
Building on the labour market data analytics in Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda, and Senegal, the new phase will expand to West African countries including Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, Guinea Bissau, Malawi, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, to provide actionable insights into youth labour market trends for stakeholders in the private and public sector.
Africa is on the brink of a demographic shift that requires investment in the skills and talent of its youth. With the unprecedented growth in its youth population (ages 15–35), an increase of 132 million is expected between 2021 and 2030. As of 2025, approximately 288 million African youth are employed, primarily in the informal sector (244 million), with the majority working in agriculture (126 million) and services (118 million). While agriculture remains the top employer in 2025, the services sector is projected to slightly overtake it by 2030, employing 43% of youth compared to 42% in agriculture. At the same time, an estimated 121 million youth (23%) are not in employment, education, or training, with two-thirds of this group being young women.
“West Africa is home to some of the fastest-growing youth populations globally. By expanding our data coverage and insights, we’re equipping governments, communities, and partners with the tools they need to address gaps, and drive better-informed policies that can transform millions of lives,” said Reshma Sheoraj, VP of Strategic Engagements, World Data Lab.
“Real-time labor market data is crucial to addressing unemployment in Africa,” added , Mastercard Foundation. “By making employment trends more visible, we’re fostering a shared understanding of the challenges and building a shared commitment to solutions.”
The development follows the successful launch of the Africa Youth Employment Clock, a first-of-its-kind real-time data platform to track and forecast youth employment trends across the continent, launched in 2024. This partnership supports the Mastercard Foundation’s Young Africa Works strategy, which aims to enable 30 million young Africans, 70 percent of them women, to access dignified and fulfilling work by 2030.
About WDL
World Data Lab (WDL) has a mission to create public goods that bring clarity to – and heighten the visibility of – some of the most complex challenges of our time, including the development of datasets and tools that track United Nations SDGs in real-time. To date, this includes tracking poverty, hunger, water scarcity, gender, health, and internet access in close cooperation with leading global organizations and governments (UNICEF, OECD, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and many more). By combining new data sources with groundbreaking modeling methods, WDL assists the public, governments and other organizations in making data-driven decisions to solve the world’s biggest challenges. These tools are developed as part of our mission to democratize data and make it accessible and actionable for everyone. In short, making everyone count.
About the Mastercard Foundation
The Mastercard Foundation works with visionary organizations to enable young people in Africa and in Indigenous communities in Canada to access dignified and fulfilling work. It is one of the largest, private foundations in the world with a mission to advance learning and promote financial inclusion to create an inclusive and equitable world. The Foundation was established by Mastercard in 2006 as an independent organization with its own Board of Directors and management.
For more information on the Foundation, please visit: www.mastercardfdn.org.