The Youth Futures Data Repository is a pan-African initiative that guides young people towards evidence-based skills development and career decisions. Funded by the Mastercard Foundation and spanning eight countries, it asks what young Africans need to know to find sustainable, dignified and fulfilling work, and what data is required to answer those questions at continental scale.

The project bridges the informal and formal economies, takes in the gig economy and the growing culture of workism, and pays particular attention to gender inclusion. Alongside the repository itself, it builds data analytics capacity in each participating country, so that the insights it generates are country-specific and locally owned.

A three-phase design that trains local researchers first, then listens to young people, then builds the framework from what they say. Two questions guide the work throughout.

Young Africans make decisions about skills and careers with little reliable, locally relevant data to draw on. This project aims to change that by giving them evidence-based information for informed career decisions, bridging the informal and formal economies, and building data analytics skills in each country so that the insights keep growing after the project ends.

Youth Futures is contract research led by the Centre for the Future of Work at the University of Pretoria, commissioned by the Mastercard Foundation in 2024 and currently active. It sits within the Centre’s youth employment and skills work, building a data repository for skills and job-market readiness across the continent.