Three hundred thousand young people in Ghana and other parts of Africa will benefit from training to prepare them for work at Nestlé, the world’s leading nutrition, health and wellness company.
The Chief Executive Officer of the company, Paul Bulcke said under his outfit intends to provide readiness-for-work training for more than 300,000 young people, as well as create more than 3,000 apprenticeships and traineeship opportunities in Africa by the end of 2018.
The training will include career advice, CV workshops and interview guidance, and will take place at Nestlé sites, career fairs and in schools and colleges across the continent.
“Nestlé will also build and strengthen strategic partnerships with organisations supporting youth development,” Mr. Bulcke has stated when speaking at Nestlé’s Creating Shared Value Forum in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, where business, civil society and government leaders from Africa and beyond are focused on ‘Investing in Sustainable Development in Africa’.
Youth unemployment presents serious global social and economic challenges, and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8 aims to ‘substantially reduce the proportion of young people not in employment, education or training by 2020’. Africa is a continent of opportunity that is home to 1.2 billion people, over 70% of whom are 30 years old or younger.
Nestlé said it is vital that these people have access to decent job opportunities. The company said it is working hard to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, and Mr. Bulcke’s announcement shows the important role business has to play, the statement noted.
In addition to providing apprenticeships, traineeships and training, Nestlé is developing initiatives to encourage youth entrepreneurship across Africa, particularly among women. For example, the ‘My Own Business’ programme gives thousands of people across Africa and Asia the tools and expertise they need to run successful small businesses.
Nestlé said its commitment to youth in Africa, Asia and Oceania is part of the Nestlé Needs Youth initiative, which was extended globally in 2015 to help young people across the world develop skills and get hired.
The company first launched the initiative in Europe in 2013 to offer 10,000 job opportunities and 10,000 traineeships or apprenticeships across the continent by the end of 2016 and to help tackle high youth unemployment.
In 2015, Nestlé rolled it out in the Americas, where it will offer 24,000 job opportunities and 7,000 apprenticeships, internships or traineeships by the end of 2018.
In May the company supported the first Pacific Alliance Youth Summit in Lima, to promote youth employment in Peru, Chile, Colombia and Mexico: one in eight people under 25 in these countries does not have a job. Nestlé also founded the Alliance for Youth in 2014. This alliance of around 200 leading companies in Europe helped more than 50,000 young people find jobs or training opportunities in its first year, and is now expanding globally.
