Strengthening Somali Youth Employability (SOM-YEP) · Islamic Development Bank, Tadamon programme · Bossaso & Mogadishu · September 2025 – February 2027

Stakeholder validation workshop for the Youth Employability and Labour Market Study, Mogadishu, April 2026.

SORDO has completed and validated its 2026 Youth Employability and Labour Market Study, the most detailed picture of the Somali youth labour market the organisation has produced. The research drew on 150 household surveys and 20 focus group discussions alongside 312 young people and 73 employers surveyed across Puntland and Banadir. It was validated at a stakeholder workshop in Mogadishu in April 2026 attended by federal and state ministries, employers, training institutions and youth representatives.

The headline findings are stark. Youth unemployment stands at 34.28%, well above the regional average. Six in ten young people are not in employment, education or training. And only 34% of the vocational training on offer aligns with what employers say they actually need — a mismatch that leaves graduates qualified for work that does not exist.

Beneath those numbers is a structural problem the study documents in detail: 84% of employers recruit through informal personal referrals (xiriir) rather than open advertisement, and 76% prioritise soft skills over technical qualifications. Where hiring runs on networks, young people without them are locked out regardless of training. A 36% gender pay gap between young men and women persists, and 87% of women report active workplace discrimination. Most telling, 37.31% of youth surveyed said they intend to migrate — a figure the study frames not as a labour market statistic but as a crisis of hope.

What the study found

These findings now shape the delivery design of SOM-YEP itself. The project is supporting 200 young people — including internally displaced youth, school dropouts and returnees — through climate-smart agriculture and livestock training and a three-month, ten-module TVET programme, alongside mentorship and start-up kits for 25 youth-led enterprises. It carries a 30% female participation target across every TVET cohort and requires a minimum of three women-led enterprises in every ten start-ups supported.

Job fairs in Bosaso and Mogadishu will connect graduates directly to private sector employers, deliberately substituting for the referral networks the study found excluding them. A new Somalia Interagency Youth Employment Coordination Platform, co-led with the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Higher Education, has also been formally established to carry the study’s findings into national policy rather than leaving them in a report.

Timeline