Using Digital Connectivity to Expand Global Job Opportunities for African Women

The expansion of internet connectivity throughout Africa offers the potential to connect workers to jobs beyond their local regions, with remote international work offering the possibility to develop and use digital skills. This is particularly important for women, who may face more constraints on international migration. However, access alone is often not enough to deliver job benefits, even for those with education and computer skills. The Global Jobs Africa program is based in Malawi, but is also recruiting young workers from other African countries with the goal of overcoming barriers to success on global job platforms. We have a partnership with Upwork, and have developed a training and mentoring program that helps workers set up profiles, learn to search for appropriate jobs, develop optimal bidding strategies, and build reputation to compete globally. We have a pilot RCT underway with 200 workers (42% women) which is being used to finetune the training and mentoring content and understand constraints to finding and retaining platform jobs. We are applying to JOI to scale this up to reach a gender-balanced sample of 300 workers, examining whether women face additional constraints, and combining surveys with platform data to learn how participation in global jobs affects broader economic empowerment outcomes. This project addresses a critical knowledge gap about how to help African women effectively use digital connectivity to access economic opportunities beyond their local markets.