SYPALA 2026: Senyo Hosi charges African leaders to fix unemployment and production challenges

Founder and Executive Chairman of Kleeve and Tove Ltd, Senyo Hosi, has said that Africa’s unemployment crisis goes beyond the lack of jobs, saying the continent also faces a deeper problem of weak production, low productivity and a shortage of businesses capable of employing young people at scale. Speaking on the topic “Beyond Politics: How Business and Public Policy Can Drive Africa’s Transformation”, at the Students & Young Professionals Africa Liberty Academy (SYPALA) 2026 organised by IMANI Africa, Mr Hosi said the scale and quality of employment available to young people should be a major concern for governments, businesses and policymakers. Mr Hosi said the employment crisis also reflected the continent’s limited productive capacity.

He said African economies had too few companies operating at a scale that could absorb large numbers of skilled young people. “It points to a deeper problem in how our economy is abstracted,” he said. “Unemployment is often discussed as a labour market problem.

But Africa is also a production problem.” Mr Hosi pointed to the wider labour market situation in sub-Saharan Africa, where he said nearly three out of four young adults between the ages of 25 and 29 were in insecure work as of 2023. “The wider labour market evidence remains even so. In sub-Saharan Africa, nearly three in four young adults aged 25 to 29 were insecure at work as of 2023,” he said.

“I don’t think the story has changed, if not possibly worse,” he added. According to him, the figures become more worrying when the nature of the work being done by young people is considered. He said about 60 per cent of those experiencing employment insecurity were in the agrarian sector and largely outside the more productive parts of the agricultural value chain.

“And in all these numbers, these three we are talking about are out of four, and insecurity, 60% are within the agrarian sector,” he said. “Not in the very productive part of the agrarian chain.” Mr Hosi said the figures showed that simply counting the number of people engaged in some form of economic activity did not give a complete picture of the employment situation in Africa. “In other words, Africa’s challenge is not only unemployment,” he said.

Mr Hosi identified informality, underemployment and low productivity as some of the deeper challenges affecting Africa’s labour market. Founder and Executive Chairman of Kleeve and Tove Ltd, Senyo Hosi, has warned that Africa cannot achieve meaningful economic transformation if its economies continue to record growth without creating enough jobs for young people. “We talk about GDP as if we eat GDP,” he said.