With the right support, young people themselves can help tackle the youth employment crisis. We have the ideas and the motivation. We just need the opportunity and support.
Africa's informal economy is one of the most innovative and inventive environments in the world. Yet it is an environment with little regulation in which workers are often exposed to hard conditions and live without a safety net.
If you live in Greece or Spain or even in parts of the United States, that nasty gurgling sound is the economy going down the drain. The official economy, that is -- the one that gets tracked by the accountants and tax officials and economists who feature in the media every day.
The informal sector -- those businesses and entrepreneurs who work outside of the formal market economy -- is huge and largely undocumented in most developing economies.
What do an arms dealer, an agricultural worker, a sex worker, and a dining hall worker all have in common? They all operate in the increasingly growing realm of grey areas between legal/illegal, licit/illicit and formal/informal economies.
Job creation efforts must ensure that women and low-wage working families have access to quality jobs through job training and inclusion in emerging sectors such as the green economy.
