The Sprout Of Tech Start Ups Tackling Unemployment Crisis In Africa

Africa is one of the continents leading in unemployment rates, with countries such as Kenya having almost half of its population being jobless. Around 40 per cent of Kenya’s population have no jobs.

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Namibia have unemployment rates of 46.1 per cent and 34 per cent respectively while South Africa, percieved to be among the developed countries has 27 per cent unemployment rate. 18.8 per cent of Nigerians are jobless.

However, tech start ups have come up to bridge the gap between employers and those seeking for jobs.

According to the recently-released Future of Work: Exploring the African Digital Work Landscape 2018 report by Disrupt Africa, 180 tech startups across the continent have developed solutions helping users find work, be it full time or project-based.

“Unemployment is one of the biggest challenges facing the African countries and the traditional solutions that exist cannot satisfy the fast growing job market,” says Edward Vaisberg, chief operating officer (COO) of Kenyan recruitment startup Fuzu.

In Kenya, employers meet employees in various platforms such as Myjobsinkenya.com, brightermonday.com, career builder, career web among others.

Institutions and individuals are shying away from the traditional methods of recruitment, opening up opportunities for online recruitment.

“This leaves immense opportunity for investors to play integral roles in driving recruitment solutions around the world. The online recruitment space has already become saturated with investors both looking to achieve outstanding returns, as well as contribute to the social and economic development of Africa,” says Anish Shivdasani, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of South African jobs platform Giraffe

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It has gone to a level where recruitment portals are being equipped with intelligence features. HireHunt (Egyptian), for example, has introduced artificial intelligence and online gamified assessments to remove hiring bias and speed up the whole process, while Fuzu is helping jobseekers marry career planning with learning.

“Job boards may have been a step forward years ago when no digital recruitment solutions existed, however they are quickly becoming much less effective for both jobseekers and employers,” says Basil Fateen, the founder of HireHunt. “Traditional job boards need to be replaced with smarter solutions in order to handle the massive amounts of unemployed and unfilled positions.”

The trend is not only catching pace on job websites alone. Corporate and other websites are following suit by creating job sections in their websites. In fact, almost every corporate website has a section where job seekers can view current vacancies and apply for jobs.

“Most of them provide additional products that jobseekers need, such as employability courses for personal and professional growth, employment-related blog posts, personality tests and, in more advanced platforms like Fuzu, offer jobseekers feedback for the applications they make to various organisations,” adds Fateen.

Those that specialise with job posting have gone an extra mile to give special advise to potential employers and employees.

Providing such needed services that enable jobseekers to understand the full scope of the job market and what they need to do to stand out, while giving them an opportunity to be found by hiring managers, has had a positive impact on African jobseekers.

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