Private donor backed Africa Jobs Fund launches

A $100 million philanthropic fund aimed at raising incomes across sub-Saharan Africa has launched. 

The Africa Jobs Fund says it will help shift local workers from agriculture to ‘high productivity jobs’ within the industrialised export manufacturing sector, building supply chains and ‘by connecting African manufacturers to global markets.’

‘The challenge is that the first companies to enter a new export market face high setup costs: training workers, building supply chains, and finding buyers. The fund will help pioneer businesses overcome these barriers, enabling commercial capital to follow,’ the fund said.

On its website, the fund says it actively does not focus on global health interventions with the belief that ‘rising incomes are the only durable way to address the root causes of poor health outcomes’.

Daniel Yu, founder of $260 million-valuation ecommerce company Wasoko, leads the fund.

Wasoko started as a small operation in Dar es Salaam, before turning into logistics network connecting suppliers with informal retailers across Africa.

Renaissance Philanthropy, founded by Tom Kalil, a former strategist in the Clinton and Obama administrations, will house the funds. The organisation says it has moved over $500 million in philanthropic funds towards high-risk scientific and technologic endeavours.

The fund will also invest in ‘ethical pathways’ for moving locals to higher-income countries that ‘reduce the role of exploitative intermediaries’, which along with export manufacturing are ‘proven routes out of poverty’.

The Africa Jobs Fund says it hopes to create income gains of ‘more than $50 billion for African workers and more than double the lifetime income of at least 250,000 low-income people.’

Yu has previously said that he believes young people from wealthier countries who care about development should consider entrepreneurship rather than stepping into the aid industry.

In 2023, Yu said that he believes a commercial private entity ‘does something no NGO can’.

Meanwhile, NGO Doctors with Africa was a major force behind addressing personal hygiene and food safety, nutrition and public health best practices at Tooku Garments, a factory in Tanzania that produces millions of jeans for large multinationals such as Levi’s and Walmart.

Tooku Garments is cited on the fund’s website as a successful case study in upskilling, without mention of the NGO’s safety work with garment factory workers. 

Shafi Musaddique is the news editor at Alliance magazine