Over the last two years, more than 75% of the people who enrolled in the Workplace Fundamental Skills programme at I-Train Africa were already working. They arrived because their productivity had slipped and no one had ever taught them the workplace and digital skills their jobs now demand. Data like that teaches you to read big announcements by asking one question: who learns something because of this?
So when the General Debate of the 81st UN General Assembly closed on September 28, I read the speeches, releases and reports the way someone who trains working professionals would. This is what I found, and what I think it means for people who are already working.
1. The money went to children’s classrooms.
On September 23, the Global Partnership for Education reported that leaders at the General Assembly had mobilised $3.5 billion in international resources, and that partner countries had announced $471 billion in domestic education financing, a 32 percent increase by 2030. Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, described the goal as improving education for 750 million children by 2030. GPE puts the number of children and young people out of school at 270 million.
These are large and necessary numbers, and they are numbers about children. Over the same period, official development assistance fell 23.1% in real terms in 2025, the largest annual drop in the history of aid, according to the OECD’s preliminary data. If your skills have to keep pace with your job, who is financing that?
2. The jobs data shows why skills cannot wait.
The ILO’s Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026, published on August 11, reports a global youth unemployment rate of 12.4%, or 67 million young people. About 20% of young people are not in employment, education or training, more than 257 million people. In low and lower-middle-income countries, nearly nine in ten young workers are in informal jobs.
The report also estimates that 6.1% of jobs held by young people are in occupations highly exposed to AI-related change. Many of those overlap with clerical and administrative roles, which have declined for young people since 2023. The ILO’s Sukti Dasgupta said that “the direct impact on jobs is still unclear.” When even the ILO calls the impact unclear, the safest position is a skill set that applies in more than one role.
3. Labour standards are catching up with how people work.
In June 2026 the ILO adopted Convention No. 193 on decent work in the platform economy, which it describes as the first international labour standard dedicated to the platform economy. It held a high-level event on the convention at the General Assembly on September 25. Many African professionals now earn through freelance, consulting and remote platforms, so this matters to them directly. What matters next is which governments ratify it.
4. African leaders put young people at the centre, and left the skills question open.
Ghana’s President, John Mahama, told the Assembly on September 24 that our continent “possesses the world’s youngest population” and pledged to process Africa’s minerals locally to “create dignified jobs for our youth.” The same day, Nigeria’s Vice President, Kashim Shettima, speaking for President Tinubu, called for greater value addition, manufacturing, technological innovation and knowledge-driven growth, and invited the world to work with Nigeria’s “inventive, resourceful, and enterprising young people.”
Value-added jobs need workplace skills: communication, digital execution, collaboration, accountability for results. In the full texts I read, neither speech set out how those skills would be built or financed. Who builds them?
5. The loudest topic was AI, and the debate centred on safety and rules.
Secretary-General António Guterres told leaders that the world “cannot afford a race to the bottom on AI safety.” In his address he named four tests for the future: AI, climate change, war and inequality, and said that across all four “the decisive issue is power.” Governing AI is necessary work. Preparing the workforce to use it is a separate job, and in the records I reviewed no one has taken it on at scale.
6. The conversation has no data about working professionals. I can bring some.
Every commitment above points at the same group: children and young people. That is the right long-term priority, and it leaves a second group outside the frame, the professionals who already hold jobs and carry much of the continent’s output today. When their skills fall behind, their employers feel it as lower productivity and they feel it as career risk.
Our programme records show that this group acts when it sees the gap. More than 75% of our Workplace Fundamental Skills enrolments over the last two years were professionals. In the reviews I have read, learners report that their current employers are pleased with the change in their work.
We also work at the other end of the pipeline. Operation Get Employed, which we launched under the Mastercard Foundation EdTech Fellowship in partnership with Co-creation HUB (CcHUB) Limited , subsidised the same programme for young people. More than 200 young people have completed it, and 50 are in our October cohort now.
These two groups do not compete. A young person entering work and a professional ten years into a career need the same fundamentals, and each strengthens the other inside a team. Policy that funds one group and overlooks the other leaves part of the workplace unprepared.
Africa has far more young people than established professionals, so the policy conversation follows the larger number. I believe the productivity upside from equipping the smaller group is large and has never been measured at scale. Measuring it is a data question, and our cohorts are a starting point. Who else is collecting this evidence?
What professionals should do
- Treat your skills as an asset you finance yourself. Set a monthly learning budget in hours and money, because no pledge reviewed here funds working-age skills at scale.
- Describe your work as tasks and outcomes. Roles built from clerical and administrative tasks are the ones the ILO flags as most exposed, so show what you deliver beyond the routine.
- Choose arrangements that formalise your work. Contracts, written scopes and records of delivery protect you now and prepare you for the platform standards that are coming.
What I recommend to policymakers and funders
- Include working professionals in skills financing. Place them alongside youth programmes in national skills plans and funding calls.
- Fund pilots that measure productivity. Track output and employer outcomes for employed learners, so the case for scale rests on evidence.
- Seat practitioners who hold programme data. Panels and policy tables that decide skills financing need the people who train working professionals every cohort.
Skills that travel between employers also keep talent employed through every downturn. Portability is the missing piece between the commitments made in New York and the jobs leaders promised.
I would like a seat at those tables. I hold the programme data and the field experience on working professionals, and I will share both. If you convene a policy panel or fund workforce skills in Africa, send me a message. My next article, on October 30, covers what UNGA 81 means for young people, parents and NYSC members.
Global Employability Strategist | Innovation & Workforce Systems Architect
Building workforce systems that help people, organisations and economies perform better.