increasing adolescent girls’ human development outcomes and likelihood to engage in income-generating activities (World Bank 2013).

# **_Identify and develop marketable skills that increase opportunities for service sector employment and for entrepreneurial activities_**

There is a need to identify and develop marketable skills, especially for women and youth who migrate to cities from rural areas, since many of them only have agricultural skills. As long as Sudan continues to experience droughts and desertification and have large numbers of IDPs, people will continue to migrate out of those circumstances (primarily, though not exclusively, from the Darfur region) to urban areas that are believed to offer a diversity of employment opportunities. Despite the large number of working-age youth in Sudan, however, many are unemployed, especially in the country’s urban areas. Few workingage Sudanese attend vocational training programs (3 percent). Of those who do, about a third are women, and about a third are youth. The KIIs with employers and employees revealed an education and skills mismatch in the labor market. Vocational training programs, coupled with basic business programs, should be established and/or strengthened based on the specific demands of the labor market in the areas in which they are being offered, as well as the interests of the youth and the women who live there, with access to funding available to encourage an entrepreneurial spirit. Additionally, vocational training programs tailored to specific geographic regions should not only help people obtain the skills necessary to become employed in needed vocations but also emphasize job search skills, so that those who do not have access to the internet or to _wasta_ can still succeed.<sup>32</sup> In a related vein, research has shown that, to increase women’s economic activity, rather than focusing on general managerial training, programs are more effective in numerous contexts in Africa when addressing socio-emotional skills and gender-specific content (Campos et al. 2019).

The service sector employs 46 percent of the labor force and is a key sector for the employment of women and youth. However, a number of factors are deterring service sector growth. These include, but are not limited to, weak economic growth, flagging infrastructure, poor management, and the inability to attract and retain a strong workforce, both skilled and unskilled. Similar to the above-described recommendation with respect to the agricultural sector, women and youth can be instrumental in supporting the growth of the service sector. To ensure that women and youth can both contribute to this growth and benefit from a growing sector, vocational programs should be designed and offered to those with less education and training and ‘young professional programs’ to those who have recently graduated from higher education programs. To facilitate women’s access to these kinds of programs, evidence suggests that it is important to improve outreach and introduce flexibility in hours; create a safe, gender-sensitive training environment and transport to and from training opportunities; and use mentoring and ensure equal participation in training and in management of skills development institutions (ILO 2014; World Bank 2020e).

> 32 World Bank (2020e) identifies among the top lessons learned for increasing employment particularly among young women the need to not only empower adolescent girls and develop marketable skills but also stress the importance of increasing efficiency in job searches.

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