Medium-term Impact of Apprenticeship on Youth

With one of the lowest primary completion rates in Sub-Saharan Africa, youth in Côte d'Ivoire lack the necessary skills to engage in productive employment. In this context, apprenticeship programs are a major source of post-primary education in West Africa, and a common avenue to tackle youth under-employment. We have launched an experiment with an ambitious design to evaluate the impact of a subsidized, dual apprenticeship program on both youth and firms. Results from a first follow-up survey while youth were still in apprenticeship show that the program had an overall positive impact on both firms and youth. However, it seemed to have a lower effect on youth with a higher opportunity cost of participating in the program. In two additional follow-up surveys among youth after their exit from the apprenticeship program, we will track all youths in the sample, with the objective to estimate program impacts on income, skills, and employment in the medium run.