The School-to-Work Transition for Young Females in Sub-Saharan Africa: Comparative qualitative evidence from six countries

The transition from school to work is a very important stage in the life of a young person. Of particular interest here is the type of early work opportunities young people can obtain after completing their education. An individual’s first full-time job is potentially very important as this early work experience is likely to shape their subsequent opportunities. For young people in low-and lower-middleincome countries, the challenge of successfully transitioning from school to work is often much greater as many key ‘family formation’events (eg marriage, pregnancy, childbirth) can occur simultaneously, especially in countries where early marriage or childbirth is common. The decisions to complete school, start a family, and begin work, for example, can all be interconnected. The school-to-work transition for young people in the developing world has been widely studied in recent years. Helpful reviews are presented by Nilsson (2019) and Alam and de Diego (2019). A large amount of data was also collected by the ILO and MasterCard Foundation School-to-Work Transition Surveys (STWTS)(under the Work4Youth project), conducted in 34 countries between 2012–2016 (ILO and MasterCard Foundation 2016). Many studies have utilised this data, including important overview studies by Matsumoto and Elder (2010) and Manacorda et al.(2017), as well as cross-country studies on specific aspects of this transition such as rural development (Elder et al. 2015), gender differentials (Elder and Kring 2016), and educational qualifications (Sparreboom and Staneva 2014). To add to this, there are country-specific STWTS data and reports available for almost all …

Jane Kabubo-Mariara, Adalbertus Kamanzi, Andy McKay

EfD Authors

Kabubo-Mariara, Jane

Sustainable Development Goals

Quality Education

Decent Work and Economic Growth