The Empower Africa Business Platform is Now Live !!!
A new philanthropic investment initiative focused on tackling unemployment and low incomes in Africa has been launched with a target of raising $100 million to support businesses creating large-scale, quality jobs across sub-Saharan Africa.
The initiative, known as the Africa Jobs Fund (AJF), will operate under Renaissance Philanthropy, a US-based nonprofit organisation that develops mission-driven philanthropic funds focused on long-term global challenges.
AJF plans to channel funding into two sectors it believes have historically played the biggest role in lifting populations out of poverty: export manufacturing and international labour mobility.
The fund argues that Africa’s growing youth population cannot rely solely on informal work or subsistence farming if incomes are to improve significantly.
Instead, it sees labour-intensive manufacturing and access to overseas employment opportunities as more effective pathways for economic transformation.
Daniel Yu, the founder of African B2B e-commerce company Wasoko, is leading the new fund.
Wasoko grew into one of Africa’s largest retail supply platforms, raising more than $145 million and serving over 150,000 informal retailers across several African markets.
Speaking during the launch, Yu said unemployment and underemployment remain at the centre of Africa’s poverty challenge.
“Persistent poverty is at its core a jobs problem,” he said. “Africa has hundreds of millions of working-age people reliant on subsistence agriculture or informal work that pays a few dollars a day. Those same people, in the right job at home or abroad, could earn significant multiples of their income.”
He added that AJF intends to support companies capable of creating those opportunities at scale.
“Nothing else in development comes close to the impact of getting this right, and that is why I am building AJF,” Yu said.
According to the fund, export-oriented manufacturing businesses in Africa often struggle to attract early-stage investment because pioneering companies face high costs when entering new markets.
These include training workers, establishing supply chains and securing international buyers.
AJF says philanthropic funding can help absorb some of that risk before commercial investors step in later.
The organization also plans to back businesses involved in international labour mobility, including firms connecting African workers to opportunities abroad in sectors facing labour shortages.
The fund says many low-income workers seeking overseas jobs encounter expensive recruitment fees, poor information and inadequate training, while employers in wealthier countries often struggle to access reliable recruitment networks.
Ben Hyman, founder of recruitment company Talent Safari, has joined AJF as an operating partner.
The fund has also assembled a high-profile advisory team that includes Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, co-founder of Flutterwave and Andela, as well as Samantha Power, the former USAID administrator and former US ambassador to the United Nations.
Power said improving access to quality employment remains one of the strongest tools available for reducing poverty globally.
“In my time leading USAID, it became clear that helping people access better jobs, through international labour mobility and export manufacturing, is one of the most powerful tools we have to lift families out of poverty,” she said.
“The Africa Jobs Fund is pursuing this with tremendous rigor and ambition, and it is in our collective interest to do all we can to support and scale their investments.”
Aboyeji said the next phase of Africa’s economic growth will depend on businesses capable of employing millions of people rather than only building high-growth technology startups.
“African founders have shown they can build category-defining companies,” he said. “The next decade is about building the ones that put millions of people to work.”
AJF’s launch comes at a time when unemployment remains a major concern across Africa, which has the world’s youngest population.
Analysts have increasingly warned that while the continent’s startup ecosystem has attracted billions in venture capital over the last decade, job creation has not kept pace with population growth.
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