Employment vs enrolment. Is international development focused on the wrong success metric?

For decades, international development has looked to ‘access’ as its key metric. We measure success by the number of students entering classrooms, how many certificates are awarded and by the proportion of young people enrolled in vocational training or higher education. However, measuring enrolment alone masks a growing challenge across Sub-Saharan Africa (including Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa and Ghana), where millions of youth hold qualifications that yield no financial return, for them or the global economy. Data from the African Development Bank Group notes that two thirds of Africa’s young people are unemployed or in unstable employment, despite better access to education in recent times.

To make better use of capital and human potential, international development funders, philanthropists and decision-makers need to tie funding directly to graduate employment and wage growth, compelling training providers to align directly with real labour market demands.

It is easy to understand why enrolment became the default benchmark. It is visible, easy to quantify and simple to report back to donors and philanthropists, but it is merely an output metric. Unfortunately, this focus ignores the main issue, which is misaligned institutional incentives. When funding depends solely on student intake, education providers face very little accountability for true outcomes, specifically what happens after graduation. In the majority of government funded education institutions, the centre receives its budget regardless of whether its graduates secure employment or not.

Institutions are incentivised to run courses that are cheap to deliver rather than offering programmes that align with real labour market demands, churning out graduates with skills that local employers do not need while high-growth sectors face severe talent shortages. According to the Economic Policy Research Centre, between 40% and 60% of employers across the region cite skills shortages as a major barrier to business growth.

The people paying the price for this mismatch are the students. Traditional education finance often demands upfront fees, collateral or high-interest loans, all of which are barriers that exclude low-income and rural youth. Young women, who typically face the highest hurdles to entering the workforce, are disproportionately left behind. Data from the World Bank Group shows that in Sub-Saharan Africa, young women are nearly twice as likely as young men to be out of education, employment or training. When families take on debt or sell assets to fund training that leads to unemployment, education turns into a financial trap rather than the path out of poverty.

Young people are not a risky investment whose futures are unpredictable. Rather the traditional systems that were established to serve them simply never worked in the way they should. 

To bridge the gap between classroom and workplace, education providers need to be as equally invested in success as the students themselves. Training institutions must be evaluated and supported based on graduate outcomes, such as job placement rates, starting salaries and long-term income growth. 

When institutions are held accountable for post-graduation results, could they change how they operate from the ground up? What if the curricula were designed based on the current and future needs of local industries? Close career counselling and networking with prospective employers could become central parts of training programmes, not simply introduced only at the end of a course or as an afterthought. Overall, education would then shift from a static transfer of knowledge to an active bridge into the economy.

Creating this alignment requires rethinking how we finance education and skill-building across Sub-Saharan Africa. This is where ethical outcomes-based financing offers a new path forward. Through mechanisms like ethical Income Share Agreements (ISA), students can access high-quality technical and professional education without upfront fees, debt or collateral requirements. Instead, students commit to pay a fixed, manageable percentage of their income for a limited time, but only after securing a job that pays above a fair living threshold. If they don’t earn, they don’t pay, shifting financial risk away from vulnerable students and onto the system itself.

More importantly, it creates proper accountability. Investors and training providers only succeed when the student succeeds. If a course fails to lead to employment, the financial burden does not fall on the young person who sought a better life. Instead, it falls on the providers and funders who designed and backed the programme and encourages them to adjust it to better suit the needs of local employers.

By shifting risk, ethical education finance proves that young people from low-income backgrounds are worth investing in. It reframes education funding from charity into a viable, sustainable asset class that local financial institutions can adopt, integrate and scale.

Philanthropists, impact investors and international development funders have the power to drive these changes by moving beyond abstract calls for reform. The first thing to do is to mandate graduate outcome tracking within a set period time before releasing final grant tranches. They should also structure capital allocations around ethical risk-sharing mechanisms like Income Share Agreements, income contingent loans or other outcomes based financing and finally, require training providers to co-design curricula directly with local industry and business leaders.

True financial inclusion does not end when someone is accepted into a programme, or indeed even when they receive a certificate of completion. It ends with a young person entering the workforce, earning a proper wage and building long-term economic security for themselves, their families and their communities. Decision-makers must now ask themselves if they will continue funding seats in classrooms, or if they are ready to invest in outcomes that drive real economic mobility and lifetime income growth for youth.