The African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) has announced plans to establish a Continental Centre of Excellence for Human Capital and Institutional Development, to be hosted in Kenya. This initiative is designed to serve as the agency’s central solution to a critical economic issue: the widening disparity between the millions of young Africans entering the workforce annually and the limited number of jobs and opportunities available to them. The proposal was unveiled during the inaugural AUDA-NEPAD Human Capital, Social and Institutional Development Week, which commenced in Nairobi on 11 August 2026.
Framing the initiative, AUDA-NEPAD Chief Executive Officer H.E. Ms Nardos Bekele-Thomas emphasized that the Centre is intended to function as an engine of delivery rather than adding another layer of bureaucracy. “Not another institution. A platform for execution,” she told delegates. She described a body designed to assist member states in moving “from research to application, policy to implementation, successful experience to scale, and knowledge to investment.” The Centre is envisaged as a hub that connects governments, universities, industry, and development partners around the specific capabilities required for Africa to industrialise and compete. Bekele-Thomas stressed that it should make South-South Cooperation “practical, measurable and scalable” rather than limiting it to dialogue and study visits.
The urgency driving this initiative is based on stark arithmetic. Each year, approximately 12 million young Africans enter the labour market, while the continent’s formal economies generate only around 3 million jobs. Bekele-Thomas clarified that this is not merely an employment problem. “That gap is not simply an employment challenge,” she said. “It is an economic and development challenge.” Closing this gap requires more than just training young people; it demands economies that produce, enterprises that grow, investment that creates opportunity, and institutions capable of delivering at scale. This must occur against a backdrop of rapid change, as technology, automation, climate pressures, and new production systems reshape the global economy and the capabilities countries need to compete.
Bekele-Thomas cautioned that Africa’s demographic dividend cannot be assumed. “It has to be built,” she argued, through health, education, skills, technology, productive sectors, and capable institutions. Consequently, human capital must sit at the centre of economic policy because “people are the productive capacity of an economy.” She noted that none of these elements works in isolation: “Skills without opportunity will not transform economies. Investment without capability will not deliver. Policy without institutions remains ambition on paper.”
The case for the Centre is partly grounded in AUDA-NEPAD’s own operational record. Since 2022, the agency reports that stronger systems, accountability, and implementation capability have helped grow its programme portfolio from below $30 million to more than $350 million. Additionally, it has mobilised a further $250 million in project financing and sustained budget execution above 90%. It has also become the only African Union institution to pass the European Union’s Nine-Pillar Assessment. “Stronger institutions produce stronger delivery,” Bekele-Thomas said, regarding these figures as evidence of a principle rather than a set of milestones.
This logic now guides the agency’s human-capital work. Its Human Capital, Social and Institutional Development portfolio currently comprises 26 programmes reaching all 55 African Union member states. However, Bekele-Thomas insisted that programme growth is not the objective; “system change is.” This entails education aligned with demand, skills linked to work, health systems that enable participation, innovation that strengthens enterprise, and institutions that deliver results. “We cannot train for yesterday and expect to compete in tomorrow’s economy,” she warned.
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The stakes increase as Africa builds a larger and more integrated market through the African Continental Free Trade Area — a market of more than 1.5 billion people. Bekele-Thomas argued that market access alone will not transform economies; the continent needs the skills to produce, the qualifications to move, the enterprises to compete, and the institutions to make a continental market work. To support this, AUDA-NEPAD is strengthening the link between skills, labour-market demand, and productive work. Through the Skills Initiative for Africa, approximately $120 million has been mobilised for 48 projects across eight countries. Meanwhile, programmes such as Energize Africa and the Africa Critical Skills Bank aim to strengthen entrepreneurship and labour-market intelligence to ensure capabilities translate into opportunity.
Addressing the broader scope of human capital, Bekele-Thomas stated that it cannot stop at skills and employment. “People cannot contribute fully to an economy if they are unhealthy, excluded or vulnerable,” she said, highlighting the agency’s parallel work on medicines regulation, social protection, inclusion, public-sector capability, and digitally enabled institutions. She emphasized that Africa cannot build these systems in isolation. Across the continent and the wider Global South, countries have accumulated valuable experience in skills development, digital government, health systems, industrialisation, public-sector reform, and youth employment. “We should not be reinventing solutions that already exist,” she said. “Solutions that work should be adapted, shared and scaled.”
Bekele-Thomas argued that this is the type of South-South Cooperation Africa requires: one that delivers technology transfer, skills mobility, joint research, institutional partnerships, co-investment, and implementation. She also pressed for Africa to move beyond consuming technologies developed elsewhere. As artificial intelligence, biotechnology, advanced manufacturing, and green technologies redefine production and competitiveness, she said, “we must build the capability to shape them, apply them and create value from them.” This involves investing in African scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, researchers, and skilled workers, as well as the institutions that govern technological change.
Regarding the Week’s outcomes, Bekele-Thomas was candid that its value would be judged by results. She expressed hope that it would help move from discussion to clearer priorities and practical next steps, leaving Nairobi “better aligned on what needs to be done, who will do it, and how we will follow through.” Each constituency has a role: member states must place human capital at the centre of economic planning; the private sector must help define future capabilities and create opportunities; universities and research institutions must connect knowledge more directly to Africa’s productive economy; and development partners must invest not only in projects but in the African institutions that will sustain results over the long term.
For AUDA-NEPAD, the responsibility is clear: “to close the distance between Africa’s ambition and Africa’s delivery.” This involves facilitating the transition of young Africans from learning to earning, institutions from policy to delivery, knowledge from research to application, and partnerships from goodwill to measurable impact. The conversation will continue in Accra, Ghana, from 9 to 12 December 2026, through AFESTACC and Industrial Skills Week Africa 2026. However, Bekele-Thomas noted that the work begins in Nairobi, with the choices delegates make and the commitments they carry forward. “Africa’s young people are not waiting for the future. They are ready to build it,” she concluded. If the continent can provide the systems, institutions, and opportunities to turn their energy into productive power, its demographic future “will not be a risk to manage” but “the generation that drives Africa’s transformation.”
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