The Jobtech Alliance seeks to build an inclusive jobtech ecosystem in Africa which catalyses large scale meaningful employment through jobtech solutions. We care about making jobtech:

– Viable & Scalable: Build strong platform businesses that create more jobs for young people

– Inclusive: Platforms reach more vulnerable & excluded groups, particularly women

– Impactful: Platforms enable users to do quality work that offers enhanced incomes, work security, learning, and meaningfulness

The Jobtech Alliance is a collective of entrepreneurs, practitioners, investors, funders, and policymakers collaborating to help build the jobtech ecosystem in Africa. Using a system change model called collective impact, Mercy Corps and BFA Global steer the initiative as its ‘backbone’. The initiative is guided by a Steering Group of sector experts, and by requests from the community itself.

Jobtech has huge potential to alleviate the youth unemployment challenge in Africa. We have seen that jobtech has the potential to create new work opportunities that were not previously possible, improve regularity of work, size of income, and quality of work, and overcome traditional barriers to access for marginalized groups. But we’ve also seen that it can create bad work as well as good, and create new barriers to access for marginalized groups. Yet the continent has yet to see a large amount of scaled breakthrough solutions. The market fundamentals are challenging, and there is a lack of innovation in the space. Few startups have succeeded and few funders know how to effectively contribute. There is little shared knowledge about what does/doesn’t work, and a lack of visibility and community limits scope for collaboration. This is why the Jobtech Alliance was built as an ecosystem-building initiative.

Systemic change involves adjustments or transformations in the policies, practices, power dynamics, behaviors, social norms or mindsets that underlie the societal issue at stake. In this case, we are seeking to shift behaviors of a range of actors (entrepreneurs, funders, support organizations, policymakers and more, to ensure that jobtech platforms are viable/scalable, inclusive to marginalized groups, and delivery quality jobs. In the case of a nascent sector like jobtech, this means really building the whole ecosystem. As Jobtech Alliance member, Sharmi Surianarain of Harambee explained: “What we’re really doing when we talk about system change is rewiring the system. What’s interesting here is that the cabling has not been laid yet.”