Africa is heavily plagued with unemployment today. However Africa’s unemployment problem may be getting one of its biggest private-sector bets yet.
This comes as Wasoko founder Daniel Yu has launched the Africa Jobs Fund (AJF), a $100 million initiative focused on creating high-productivity jobs across Sub-Saharan Africa.
At the centre of the fund is a belief that Africa’s poverty challenge is fundamentally a jobs problem, not just an investment problem.
According to AJF, Africa currently creates only about 3 million formal jobs yearly, despite having one of the world’s fastest-growing working-age populations. If that pace continues, by 2040, nearly 600 million of the world’s extremely poor people could be living in Africa.
The fund plans to back founders building businesses capable of creating large-scale employment while raising incomes sustainably. But AJF is not just targeting job creation in numbers. Its focus is on value-added industries, especially manufacturing and labour mobility.
According to reporting from Tech Origin. Africa is projected to host around 600 million of the world’s extreme poor by 2040, while formal job creation lags at roughly 3 million positions annually far below what is needed to absorb a rapidly growing workforce. That’s not a number that fits on a startup pitch deck. It’s the kind of challenge that keeps policymakers and development experts up at night
Africa still exports large volumes of raw materials while importing finished goods, limiting local productivity, wages, and industrial growth. AJF argues that sectors like export manufacturing can change that by creating jobs, building supply chains, increasing skills transfer, and bringing foreign currency into local economies.
According to the fund, many African workers earning around $2,000 yearly locally could potentially earn $40,000 or more through skilled labour opportunities abroad.
The initiative estimates its investments could generate over $50 billion in income gains for African workers and more than double the lifetime earnings of at least 250,000 low-income people.
Daniel Yu described persistent poverty as “at its core, a jobs problem,” adding that Africa Jobs Fund exists to back companies capable of creating those opportunities at scale.
Africa’s working-age population is exploding, but the jobs simply aren’t being created fast enough. Most people remain trapped in what development economists call the “poverty trap”stuck in subsistence agriculture or informal sector work that pays only a few dollars a day. It’s not for lack of ambition or capability. It’s a structural problem that no amount of mobile money apps or e-commerce platforms has managed to solve at scale.
The fund is also bringing together notable figures across Africa’s tech and development ecosystem.Its advisors include Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, co-founder of Andela and Flutterwave, alongside Samantha Power, former USAID administrator and former US Ambassador to the United Nations.
Taken together, the launch signals a growing shift in how Africa’s development conversation is being framed.
Daniel Yu, Co-Founder of Wasoko, launched the Africa Jobs Fund, a philanthropic investment fund seeking to mobilise $100 million over the next 5 years to back companies creating jobs across Africa. The fund will focus on export manufacturing and international labour mobility.
The fund identifies two sectors as the most effective pathways out of poverty: export manufacturing and international labour mobility. No AI platforms. No blockchain. No direct-to-consumer apps. Just the unsexy, labor-intensive work of creating real jobs that actually pay.
Who is Wasoko?
Wasoko (formerly Sokowatch) is Africa’s largest B2B e-commerce and fintech network. Founded in 2013 by Daniel Yu, the platform connects informal retailers to the digital economy, allowing small shopkeepers to order everyday essentials via SMS or app and receive free, same-day delivery. Wasoko which translates to “people of the market” in Swahili aims to transform the $600 billion African informal retail space by solving highly fragmented and inefficient supply chains.
In August 2024, Wasoko the Nairobi-based B2B platform formerly known as Sokowatch announced that it has raised $125 million in Series B funding.
The investment was co-led by Tiger Global and Avenir Growth. The Startup later merged with Egypt’s MaxAB to form the MaxAB Wasoko Group, creating a massively scaled pan-African distribution and fintech platform operating across multiple countries
Key Operations & Services Include
- B2B E-commerce: Through Wasoko, Shopkeepers can order consumer goods (groceries, household items, etc.) directly from manufacturers at competitive prices and receive direct-to-store deliveries.
- Fintech & Working Capital: Wasoko provides Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) and short-term credit loans to informal merchants based on their historic purchasing data.
- Business Insights: The platform helps retailers manage their inventory and optimize their daily operations.
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