Partners
Mastercard Foundation
Period
2021 – Present
Location
Ghana; Nigeria
Category
Youth Development; Employment and Skills; Evidence Generation (MERL)
Project Snapshot
The Mastercard Foundation’s Young Africa Works strategy aims to enable 30 million young people (70% women) to access work they consider as dignified and fulfilling by 2030. It is being implemented in all regions of the country by 22 implementing partners across various sectors.
As IPO, PDA, in partnership with Ipsos Nigeria, provides impact monitoring and technical support to the Mastercard Foundation in the implementation of the Young Africa Works strategy in Ghana.
Progress So Far
2021 – 2024 Activities
Outcomes Baseline Assessment
PDA supported the Foundation with a nationwide baseline data collection to set the benchmark for monitoring outcomes and impact for young people, their households, communities, and institutions and systems.
Young Impact Associates Program
PDA supported the Foundation in the implementation of the Young Impact Associates (YIA) program in Ghana. YIAs received one year of intense practical and theoretical training in monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) led by PDA and the Simon Diedong Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development Studies (SDD-UBIDS) in partnership with the Ghana Monitoring and Evaluation Forum (GMEF).
The YIA program is part of the Foundation’s strategy to develop young African evaluators to lead evaluations on the continent and contribute to the MEL debate and knowledge production.
2025 Program Reviews (Ghana)
The reviews explored how these initiatives supported by the Foundation contributed to enabling access to dignified and fulfilling work for young Ghanaians, especially women. They also sought to examine how the programs aligned with national development goals and the Foundation’s broader Young Africa Works strategy.
PDA led the thematic review with remote support (input) from IPSOS Nigeria. Our approach combined formative and summative evaluation, employing both quantitative surveys and qualitative tools such as interviews and focus group discussions. With a strong gender equity and social inclusion (GESI) lens, the team analyzed the sustainability of youth-led enterprises, policy alignment and systemic factors influencing youth transitions into employment in the digital economy ecosystem.
- Scaling Jobs for Women through Technology (SJFWT) – Soronko Academy. The SJFWT program targeted the digital inclusion of young women by delivering digital skills training, entrepreneurship exposure, soft‑skills development, psychosocial support, and meaningful connectivity.
- Initiative for Youth in Agricultural Transformation (IYAT) – Kosmos Innovation Centre. The IYAT program focused on transforming agriculture into a viable and innovation‑driven pathway for young people by equipping them with agritech, entrepreneurship, and business development capabilities. It delivered interventions such as the AgriTech Challenge, Start‑Up Incubation, Business Booster, and School Farm projects.
- Scaling MEST Programs – Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST): The MEST suite of programs focused on strengthening Ghana’s digital talent pipeline through foundational digital training, startup acceleration, SME scaling, and ecosystem partnerships.
- Ghana’s Deployment for STEM Graduate Employability (Ghana1000) – Industry Immersion Africa (iiAfrica): The Ghana1000 program focused on preparing STEM graduates for digital economy opportunities by offering advanced digital skills training, soft‑skills development, coaching, and job placement support.
- Absa Young Africa Works Program – Absa Bank: The five‑year initiative (2020–2025) was designed to provide affordable finance, business development support, and employment pathways for MSMEs, with emphasis on women‑led, youth‑led, and agriculture‑focused enterprises.It achieved this by offering a pari‑passu guarantee facility, interest rate subsidies, and opportunities for uncollateralized lending, delivered through both direct lending via Absa branches and indirect lending through MFIs, rural banks, savings and loans companies, and agribusiness aggregators.
- Harnessing Agricultural Productivity and Prosperity for Youth (HAPPY) Program – Agri-Impact Limited: The four‑year (2023–2027) program is a multi‑stakeholder which seeks to transform growing demand in four priority value chains (rice, soybeans, tomatoes and poultry) into dignified and fulfilling work opportunities for young people, especially young women and persons with disabilities (PwDs). Positioned within Ghana’s agricultural modernization agenda, HAPPY aims to equip youth with technical skills, enterprise support and market pathways while strengthening policy engagement and agricultural systems.
2026 Programs (Ghana)
For each of the strategic reviews below, PDA has submitted inception reports, convened co-creation workshops with program stakeholders, reviewed program documents, and conducted a Data Quality Assessment. Enumerators have been trained for deployment, and data collection is set to begin within 2026 Q3.
- Building Resilience and Investing in the Development and Growth of Entrepreneurs in Agriculture (BRIDGE-in-Agriculture);
- Financial Inclusion for Last Mile Actors (FILMA);
- Financial Institution Resilience & Strengthening Plus (FIRST+II), and
- Business in a Box (BizBox) Project
Program Outcomes Assessment
The Program Outcomes Assessment (POA) is a Mastercard Foundation-wide initiative to understand how Foundation efforts are contributing to outcomes and impact for young people, their households, communities, and institutions and systems.
POA is a core component of the Foundation’s Outcome and Impact Monitoring and Assessment approach, providing a mechanism to generate comparable evidence across programs and countries as it focuses on outcomes and change pathways, not just outputs. It assesses:
- Reach and Access: How are different groups of young people being reached and accessing opportunities?
- Progression to Dignified and Fulfilling Work: How do young people progress toward dignified and fulfilling work overtime?
- Quality of Life and Lived Experience: How do changes in work outcomes translate into improvements in lives and livelihoods?
- Systems Contribution: How are Foundation investments strengthening institutions, markets, and systems?
