  Ghana-s current youth unemployment rate is 19.7%, and the country faces a
significant youth unemployment problem. While a range of youth-employment
programs have been created over the years, no systematic documentation and
evaluation of the impacts of these public initiatives has been undertaken.
Clarifying which interventions work would guide policy makers in creating
strategies and programs to address the youth-employment challenge. By
complementing desk reviews with qualitative data gathered from focus-group
discussions and key informant interviews, we observe that most youth-employment
programs implemented in Ghana cover a broad spectrum that includes skills
training, job placement matching, seed capital, and subsidies. Duplication of
initiatives, lack of coordination, and few to non-existent impact evaluations
of programs are the main challenges that plague these programs. For better
coordination and effective policy making, a more centralized and coordinated
system is needed for program design and implementation. Along the same lines,
ensuring rigorous evaluation of existing youth-employment programs is necessary
to provide empirical evidence of the effectiveness and efficiency of these
programs.
