How Skill-Based Training Can Reduce Unemployment Among Young People
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Discover how skill-based training—through programs like those of Ndemaleckah Foundation—can reduce youth unemployment by equipping young people with market-ready skills, boosting self-employment and bridging the gap between education and jobs.
Skill-based training offers a realistic, practical, and powerful solution to youth unemployment especially in contexts like Ghana where formal employment opportunities remain limited, and many youth lack market-ready skills.
Introduction
Unemployment among young people in Ghana and across Africa remains a major challenge. Traditional academic education often fails to equip youth with practical, employable skills, and many young people end up stuck without work or in insecure informal jobs. According to recent studies, mismatches between formal education and labour-market demands contribute to prolonged joblessness.
That is where skills-based training comes in — as a powerful tool to offer alternative pathways into employment or entrepreneurship. The Ndemaleckah Foundation recognises this need. On their website, the Foundation highlights “Apprenticeship” as one of its core programmes: providing practical, hands-on training for young people to acquire real-world skills.
In this article, we examine why skill-based training works, how Ndemaleckah Foundation applies it, and how it contributes to reducing youth unemployment and promoting sustainable livelihoods.
Why Skill-Based Training Matters for Youth Employment
Bridging the Gap Between Education and Market Needs
Many young people graduate from school without the specific skills employers need — such as technical trades, digital literacy, or vocational skills. Skill-based training fills this gap by teaching job-ready, marketable competencies.Research in Ghana shows that having practical skills — for example, computer literacy — significantly reduces the duration of unemployment. Individuals with such skills exit unemployment faster than those without.
Self-employment and Entrepreneurship Opportunities
Skill-based training not only prepares youth for paid employment, but also enables them to start their own businesses — in trades, crafts, services, or small enterprises. This is especially important in contexts where formal employment opportunities are limited: through self-employment, trained youth contribute to economic activity, create jobs for themselves, and sometimes hire others — multiplying the impact.
Flexible and Inclusive Pathways for Diverse Youth
Skill-based training often accommodates people who may not have advanced formal education — providing options for out-of-school youth, school-dropouts, or those who cannot afford university. It can also be more cost-effective, scalable, and responsive to local economic needs than traditional academic paths — vital in developing economies with limited resources.
Boosting Local Economies and Reducing Informal Unemployment
Training in trades (crafts, tailoring, agriculture, technical skills, etc.) empowers youth to contribute directly to local economies and reduce reliance on informal, unskilled labour.
It encourages diversification of economic activities at grassroots level — from small-scale businesses to agriculture, services, and crafts — contributing to community resilience and overall socio-economic development.
How Ndemaleckah Foundation Uses Skill-Based Training to Empower Youth
The Ndemaleckah Foundation explicitly includes “Apprenticeship” among its main programs. They offer practical training and hands-on experience in various trades and industries to empower individuals.
Practical, Market-Ready Skills
Through the apprenticeship program, beneficiaries acquire vocational and trade skills — for example, tailoring or other crafts — enabling them to build small businesses or offer services in their communities. On their website, one beneficiary of the Foundation emphasises: after training in seamstress work, she was able to start her own small business — illustrating how skill acquisition becomes a route to self-employment and financial independence. Targeting Vulnerable and Underserved Groups
The Foundation aims to empower “young girls, women, and children,” which suggests an inclusive approach — ensuring that youth (including girls and potentially marginalized individuals) gain access to opportunities.
This inclusivity is particularly important in contexts where formal employment and education do not reach all demographics equally, and where traditional academic paths are less accessible.
Combining Skill Training with Support Systems
Ndemaleckah’s model doesn’t only provide training — they also position themselves as a support organisation (through scholarships, healthy-food programmes, medical care, etc.) to address broader socio-economic needs, which helps create a more enabling environment for empowered youth to thrive.
By integrating skills training with community-support services, the Foundation helps address structural barriers — health, education, nutrition — that often hinder youth from leveraging their skills fully.
Challenges & What Matters for Success
While skill-based training presents great promise, success depends on several factors:
Quality and relevance of training: Vocational training must align with labour-market demand — skills taught should match what employers or clients need. Poor-quality or outdated training reduces employability.
Certification and recognition: Formal recognition of the acquired skills helps graduates in accessing better opportunities. Without certification or standardization, many may remain in low-paying informal jobs.
Support beyond training: Access to startup capital, mentorship, business skills (if self-employment is the goal) — training alone isn’t always enough. This is why organizations like Ndemaleckah combine multiple support services (skills + community support) to increase success rates.
Inclusivity and accessibility: Ensuring training is accessible to women, marginalized youth, rural populations, or those with limited formal education broadens impact. Skill-based initiatives should be inclusive to reach those most in need.
Continuous adaptation to economy: As economies evolve — with new industries, technologies, and market demands — training curricula must also adapt to remain relevant.
Conclusion — A Path Forward: Skills for Today, Hope for Tomorrow
Skill-based training offers a realistic, practical, and powerful solution to youth unemployment — especially in contexts like Ghana where formal employment opportunities remain limited, and many youth lack market-ready skills.
Organizations like the Ndemaleckah Foundation demonstrate how this can be done effectively: by providing practical apprenticeship opportunities, targeting underserved groups (especially young women), and combining training with community support (health, nutrition, education).
By equipping young people with relevant skills — tailoring, crafts, trades, entrepreneurship — and empowering them to start their own enterprises or find stable jobs, such training can turn unemployment into self-reliance, dignity, and long-term opportunity.
As Ghana and other African countries navigate rising youth populations and economic challenges, investment in high-quality, inclusive, market-aligned skill-based training is not just helpful — it could be essential.
