By Nick Markham (post updated December 2024)

At the Jobtech Alliance, we frequently explore the challenging ideas and jobtech categories we want more African innovators to tackle. These internal discussions have led us to significant insights, and now, we’re sharing them publicly through our Request for Jobs, similar to Y-Combinator’s renowned Request for Startups. This initiative aims to guide and inspire the next wave of impactful jobtech solutions across Africa, addressing our urgent employment challenges and driving economic growth.

What we have learned: Our Journey So Far

When the Jobtech Alliance’s investment and venture support work first started in late 2022, we knew that the jobtech sector was nascent and under-researched. So, instead of a rigid investment thesis, we scouted interesting platforms within our taxonomy, all across the continent, which we then assessed, one by one, for business model innovation, unique demand insights, founder, and job creation potential. 

However, early in 2024, and after exhaustively reviewing over 500 jobtech platforms across Africa, we quickly realised that the most common reason for rejecting platforms was a fundamental lack of demand. Simply adding a tech platform to connect supply and demand wasn’t and will, sadly, never be enough. 

Our wonderful Steering Group members suggested a strategic pivot: instead of assessing platforms in isolation, we should leverage our privileged position at the Jobtech Alliance and strategically identify the core sectors where we fundamentally believe African labour demand will grow in the next 5-10 years. Following that, we should then explore the potential roles of jobtech platforms in these sectors and only then seek out the best innovators and companies to invest into. 

“Demand for African labour is the engine that drives job creation“

The Process of Developing a Shiny New Investment Thesis

At the core of our new investment strategy is a singular, unwavering focus: demand. Demand for African labour is the engine that drives job creation. Without sufficient demand, even the most innovative jobtech platforms will struggle to find product-market fit and generate sustainable employment. 

This of course makes logical startup sense. As Marc Andreessen famously said, ”The #1 company-killer is lack of market. A great market will tend to equal success and a poor market will tend to equal failure. Market matters most.”

In early 2024, we initiated an ambitious internal workstream at the Jobtech Alliance, laying the groundwork for our long-term investment theses and venture support strategy for the coming years. This process involved the following steps:

Stage 1: Demand-Side Mapping

We mapped sectors that we believed to have significant job-creating potential over the next decade, through secondary research, workshops, expert consultation, startup interviews, and an informed demand prediction model.

This enabled us to gather a wealth of ideas about the sectors with growing demand in Africa. We then grouped and mapped them into major sectors like ‘Creative Industries’, ‘Agent Commerce’, ‘Green Jobs’, and ‘Digital Work’

We then conducted rigorous deep dives into each sector, unpacking all the various types of labour demand or earning opportunities that we expect to emerge over the next decade. A snippet from the creative industries is below:

Stage 2: Mapping the Roles of Platforms

As a team, we then mapped all the potential roles of platforms in these anticipated sectors of job creation. From our experience, demand doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it needs to be created, and these platforms often play a major role in making demand accessible for African sellers, service providers, and workers.

“Demand doesn’t exist in a vacuum; 

it needs to be created “

This process involved utilising our existing experience of what types of models have worked in international markets and overlaying that with what is most feasible in the unique African context. The table below gives an example of what this looked like in practice:

Stage 3: Shortlisting and Prioritising

After identifying the key sectors and business models of interest, we then prioritised our work around those where we saw the greatest job creation potential and business viability. 

We debated each of these internally, going back and forth on all the inevitable sector overlaps and the nuanced inclusions and exclusions, exploring themes such as what really counts as a job, what is a quality job, what indirect employment is in each sector, and how should we factor a portfolio of work in when considering business models? 

This extensive work has given us the end result of a validated, well-researched investment thesis.

We will soon begin market scans of each of these sectors, identifying all the platforms across our African markets and centralising the relevant data about them. This will enable us to clearly observe what is happening and then compare and contrast across markets and business models. This structured approach, allows us to focus only on the most promising subsectors and startups that we should be supporting at the Jobtech Alliance, placing particular emphasis on platforms that lead from the front on inclusivity & gender,

Where We See Jobs Emerging & the Platforms We Are Looking for

As we wrote in ‘Where are all the jobs in Africa,’ jobtech is a fundamentally difficult sector. But it still contains a number of opportunity spaces for innovation that we’re excited about and hope to see more people building in. Our refined investment focus has highlighted ten promising sectors. We outline those below in a bit more depth, including looking at some of the business models and standout platforms that we fundamentally believe in;

Social Commerce & Agent Networks

Social commerce and agent networks leverage deeply rooted African business norms, addressing critical issues such as trust deficits, labour market inflexibility, and challenging supplier discovery. We believe that these platforms are a more realistic model of eCommerce for Africa than centralised Amazon-like marketplaces for the next decade. Inspired by successful Asian models, these platforms create substantial job opportunities particularly for women, by integrating community-based selling, distribution networks, and agent-based outreach, thus driving sustainable job creation at scale. We’re particularly interested in:

• Integrated Social Commerce Platforms: Platforms like Meesho, or Tendo, with low-price discoverability, robust infrastructure rails, and community-based selling features.
• Community Group Buying Apps: Platforms like Kapu, that leverage trusted local agents to aggregate demand orders on common household items. 
• Agent-Based Sales Platforms: Platforms leveraging agent networks for distributed sales, expanding beyond financial inclusion into eCommerce and other sectors.
• Agent Superapps: Platforms like Opareta & Avunja, that provide a wide range of services (financial, eCommerce, logistics) through a single interface, empowering agents to support various economic activities.

Digital Creative Industries

The creative industry, despite its nascency, is a $100 billion industry employing over 30 million people globally. Although Africa’s share of the global creative economy has historically been low, the sector still employs approximately 2.4 million people, a figure showing significant YoY growth, with the majority tending to be young people aged 15-29, on a freelance and part-time basis. With the rise of Afro-Optimism, the continent’s young, tech-savvy population, and our unique cultural assets providing a strong foundation for digital content creation, fashion, and influencer-driven businesses, we see a wave of new digital economic opportunities opening up. What excites us:

• Creators as Businesses: Platforms like Selar offer business management, distribution, and monetization tools for digital content creators, similar to Patreon not YouTube. Competing with global discovery platforms is challenging, so we tend to focus on platforms that empower African creators directly. Read more about why we invested in Selar here.
• Influencer Platforms: Platforms like Wowzi or Twiva that connect African influencers with monetization opportunities and brand partnerships.
• Creator-Adjacent Career Platforms: Platforms like Filmmakers’ Mart that connect creators with local service providers, such as photographers, production crews, and location managers.

Domestic & Care Work

The ILO predicts that 150 million new care jobs alone will be created by 2030. Women in care roles like nannying earn 50% more than cleaners so there’s also huge livelihood potential if these sectors can be formalized. While these platforms have largely struggled to take off across the continent so far, we still see significant potential here.

• Home Cleaning and Domestic Assistance: Platforms like Gwiji and Shaare connect households with cleaners and laundry services for regular or on-demand cleaning.
• ElderCare: Platforms that match caregivers with elderly individuals for ongoing or gig-based care like Gerocare or Greymate Care
• ChildCare: Platforms that connect families with childcare providers, such as nannies and babysitters like GoodayOn and Calinounou

Green Jobs

With the global push towards decarbonisation, coupled with a youthful population, emerging manufacturing sector, new technologies, and rich mineral resources, Africa is ideally positioned to become a leader in green jobs. A 2024 report from Shortlist and FSD Africa estimates 1.5 to 3M new direct green jobs in Africa across 12 material value chains by 2030. Unlike traditional job sectors, green jobs not only provide employment but also contribute to conservation, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and environmental sustainability. This dual impact makes them particularly suited to the evolving socio-economic landscape of Africa.

What excites us:

• Technician Platforms: Platforms like Instollar, both training and matching technicians with job opportunities and gigs in the renewable energy, electrical, and e-mobility value chains. 
• Dedicated Green Product Agent Networks: Platforms like InfiniBranches that facilitate the sales, distribution, installation, and consumer financing of green products and services.
• Climate Career Platforms: Platforms like the Energy Talent Company that facilitate training, accreditation, skill development, and employment matching in emerging green economies.

Micro-Enterprises

Africa’s 44 million MSMEs are the backbone of the continent’s economy, driving 60% of employment and 38% of GDP. Digital services are increasingly being integrated by these micro-entrepreneurs in order to gain access to operational efficiencies, to optimize the supply chain, accept and make payments, reach new markets and more. This phenomenon is only going to grow over the next decade, as digital platforms provide increasingly valuable infrastructure which enables micro-enterprises to thrive. We’re particularly interested in:

• Digital Infrastructure Platforms: Storefronts, catalog builders, and sales services platforms that help SMEs digitise, reach new customers and access new markets. Like Catlog or Sukhiba
• eCommerce Enablement Platforms: Platforms offering fulfilment, logistics, and last-mile delivery solutions, similar to Jemla or even Leta. 
• Vertically integrated platforms: As we’ve written about elsewhere, we’re always interested in platforms that build deep within individual microenterprise verticals, solving for multiple market failures in the value chain. Examples are Fitted for tailors or Orda for small restaurants.

Non-Traditional Outsourcing

Continuing on the theme of tapping into global demand, with a young, educated workforce, favorable time zones, linguistic diversity as well as 200 million English speakers, and rapidly improving infrastructure, Africa is well-positioned for outsourcing the roles of the future.

While freelancing has long been seen as a great opportunity for Africans, we think that managed services — where an intermediary company is able to both lead on commercial engagement (finding the jobs), as well as using the significant margins for recruitment, vetting, training, and quality control — is the growth area for the continent. What excites us:

• Niche specialized sectors: This could involve ‘augmented staffing’ platforms like Tana that train and place talent in global companies or ‘dev shops’ like iTalanta that manage entire tech projects for global clients.
• Next-gen BPO platforms: Platforms, like AfricaAI, that offer back-office support services such as data annotation, legal research, GenAI labeling and LLM model training.

Freelance and Digital Gig Work

While freelance roles can be difficult entry points into global work for young Africans due to global competition and downward pricing pressure, there are still opportunities for gig-based digital work. These platforms provide entry-level digital jobs that are crucial for upskilling the workforce and opening pathways to more advanced digital roles.

• New Microwork Platforms: Platforms offering services such as data annotation, data collection, and app prototyping. One example would be Rwazi. \
• Specialized or Verticalized Freelance Platforms: Platforms catering to specific niches (telehealth, tutoring, creative sectors).
• Freelancer Support Platforms: Platforms like Power that offer tools and resources for freelancers to improve their skills and marketability, such as training programs, portfolio-building tools, and financial management services. 

International Trade

Given demand constraints domestically, platforms that facilitate cross-border transactions can significantly boost job creation by expanding the customer pool for African micro-enterprises.

In addition, facilitating cross-border trade enhances economic integration, supporting the growth of regional supply chains and ultimately creating lots of jobs in adjacent sectors, from manufacturing to logistics. We’re particularly interested in:

• Export Facilitation Platforms: Platforms that assist SMEs in navigating export regulations, logistics, and market entry strategies, boosting their international sales.
• Cross-Border E-commerce Platforms: Platforms like Kwely or Anka, that enable seamless cross-border e-commerce transactions, expanding market reach for local businesses. These are most likely to be in the creative or cultural sectors and include fashion, art and crafts, and food.

Migration

Africa will simply not create enough quality jobs for Africa’s growing skilled and youthful population over the decade (more info here). Labor migration platforms can play a significant role in the safe, legal, and efficient movement of workers to regions that offer quality jobs and working conditions. Especially attractive are platforms with strong links in source countries, and these are likely to need to integrate support, training, and certification services.

Construction

The construction sector is both a major employer and a huge driver of African economic growth. With rapid urbanization showing no signs of slowing down, the opportunity for platforms that improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance workforce skills is increasing rapidly. This includes platforms like Fixa that pool, vet, train and connect skilled laborers with construction projects, ensuring efficient workforce allocation.

What’s Next: A Call for Jobs

Our new demand-driven investment thesis identifies where we see the most significant opportunities for African jobtech platforms to create jobs, and build lasting, impactful companies. Our acceleration work and patient capital will then follow these standout companies.

From our initial ten promising sectors, for the remainder of 2024 we are aiming to publish at least six, so stay on the lookout for scans into the following sectors;

• Domestic & Care Work
• Social Commerce & Agent Networks
• Creative Industries
• Green Jobs
• Other Digital Work
• Non Traditional Outsourcing

We invite Jobtech Platforms to join us in building solutions that address these critical opportunities to apply here

The author is a Venture Builder at the Jobtech Alliance from BFA Global