Youth Economic Opportunity Ecosystem Analysis: Benin Country Report

This report is the key output of an assessment implemented in Benin, as part of YouthStart Global inception phase. The report aims to capture a picture of the youth economic opportunities ecosystem in Benin by:

• Providing an overview of the employment challenge and demand for financial services;
• Presenting a comprehensive analysis of the demand for and the supply of labor;
• Identifying high-potential opportunities for youth.

It also provides an overview and mapping of the current youth intervention landscape and the supply of financial services, as well as an assessment of key gaps for each of the high-potential opportunities for youth. The key findings presented in the report are:

1. A review of barriers to youth employment highlights the weakness of the Beninese economy’s absorptive capacity;
2. Unemployment tends to grow with the level of education;
3. Accessing capital is a major and consistent challenge limiting youth’s ability to successfully start a business;
4. In terms of economic opportunities:
   • The tourism sector offers high-potential opportunities for employment;
   • Information and communications technology (ICT) is a growing sector with many opportunities for youth;
   • The crafts sector contributes about 7.5% of GDP and has a significant weight on the socioeconomic development of the country and ranks right after agriculture and trade;
   • Finally small scale processing and value addition have been identified as high potential opportunities for youth in the agriculture sector, one of the main sectors of the country’s economy.
5. In these four promising sectors, existing programs are not fully addressing the different elements required for youth to access high-potential opportunities.