Africa Jobs Fund Targets $100M to Lift Worker Incomes Across Sub-Saharan Africa
A new philanthropic investment fund focused on job creation in Sub-Saharan Africa launched on Tuesday, targeting $100 million in capital to back companies in export manufacturing and international labour mobility – two sectors it says can collectively generate more than $50 billion in income gains for African workers.
The Africa Jobs Fund (AJF), housed at US-based nonprofit Renaissance Philanthropy, is led by Daniel Yu, founder of Wasoko, one of Africa’s largest B2B e-commerce platforms. The fund aims to more than double the lifetime income of at least 250,000 low-income workers by 2040.
“Persistent poverty is at its core a jobs problem,” Yu said. “Africa has hundreds of millions of working-age people reliant on subsistence agriculture or informal work that pays a few dollars a day. Those same people, in the right job at home or abroad, could earn significant multiples of their income.”
AJF’s investment thesis rests on two pillars. The first targets export manufacturing, where the fund argues Africa holds structural advantages – wage levels now competitive with Asia, preferential tariff access into the US, EU, GCC, and active sourcing diversification by global buyers. The fund says a shift from subsistence farming to export manufacturing can increase a worker’s productivity fivefold.
The second pillar targets international labour mobility, where an informal worker earning around $2,000 a year in Africa can earn $40,000 or more abroad. AJF will back companies building formalised migration corridors, arguing that predatory recruitment fees and opaque processes currently shut out the workers who would benefit most.
Samantha Power, former head of USAID and an AJF senior advisor, said access to better jobs through labour mobility and export manufacturing is “one of the most powerful tools we have to lift families out of poverty.”
Yu is joined by Operating Partner Ben Hyman, founder of African recruitment firm Talent Safari. Senior advisors include Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, co-founder of Andela and Flutterwave, and Power.
AJF launches under Renaissance Philanthropy, which has catalysed more than $533 million for science, technology and innovation since its founding by former White House science advisors Tom Kalil and Kumar Garg.
With Sub-Saharan Africa on track to host around 600 million of the world’s extreme poor by 2040, and the continent generating only three million formal jobs annually, AJF is positioning philanthropic capital as a catalyst to draw in commercial investment at scale.
Go to TECHTRENDSKE.co.ke for more tech and business news from the African continent and across the world.
Follow us on WhatsApp, Telegram, Twitter, and Facebook, or subscribe to our weekly newsletter to ensure you don’t miss out on any future updates. Send tips to editorial@techtrendsmedia.co.ke
