The Mastercard Foundation has announced a five-year, $7.8 million gift to the Centre on African Philanthropy and Social Investment (CAPSI) at the Wits Business School in Johannesburg to boost youth employment research in Africa.

The gift will support research opportunities arising from the foundation’s Young Africa Works strategy, which aims to enable 30 million young Africans to secure dignified and fulfilling work by 2030. In cooperation with an African-led network of academic institutions, the gift will support efforts to produce data and knowledge that details the extent to which the nonprofit sector in 17 African countries is able to create decent, dignified, and fulfilling employment opportunities for young people; train 20 doctoral students at African universities in social entrepreneurship, job creation, technology inclusion, financial inclusion, enterprise development, and youth studies; and enable sustainable and reliable knowledge generation to provide measurement frameworks, data for decision making, and a digital hub to match the needs and opportunities of young Africans with dignified employment.

“The role played by the nonprofit sector is generally underestimated in many economies,” said CAPSI director Bhekinkosi Moyo. “Several anecdotes exist in every country about how the nonprofit sector keeps society cohesive and glued together through social and economic functions. Few studies have been conducted in this regard, such as the Johns Hopkins project on the size and scope of the nonprofit sector in only about three African countries. This support from the Mastercard Foundation provides us a one-off opportunity to test the hypothesis that the nonprofit sector is a major force to be reckoned with in African societies.”

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