In Senegal, where the labour force totals 4.82 million, 40% of young people are unemployed. And yet, many of those youths possess the necessary motivation and skills to carry out a professional activity.
Microcredit, a driving force in business creation
The Centre d’innovation financière (CIF) in Burkina Faso, PAMECAS, one of the major MFIs in Senegal, and ADA have decided to pool their expertise in order to develop a project to integrate young artisans in the labour force through microfinance.
The goal is to make microcredit a genuine driving force in business creation for young people.
Areas include shoe-making, automobile repairs, woodworking, etc.; in 2005 and 2006, in Dakar, nearly one hundred Senegalese youths aged 20-30 received training in business management and one quarter of those obtained credit tailored to their needs.In partnership with the network of credit unions of Burkina Faso (Réseau des Caisses populaires du Burkina Faso, or RCPB), another pilot project called "Credart" was launched in 2007, in Ouagadougou, to train a new batch of fifty young artisans by 2008.
Read the witnesses of two young Credart beneficiaries (FR) (PDF 4 Mo)
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There are 1.5 billion people between the ages of 12 and 24 around the world. 1.3 billion of those live in developing countries, a level achieved for the first time in history. (Source: World Bank 2007)
