Listening to Youth: Market Research to Design Financial and Non-Financial Services for Youth in Sub-Saharan Africa

This report presents key findings and recommendations from market research conducted by 18 financial service providers (FSPs) across 9 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) that participated in Phase I of YouthStart.

YouthStart is a UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) inclusive finance program that aims to reach 200,000 youth in SSA by 2014 with demand driven financial and non-financial services. Phase I of YouthStart involved conducting market research to determine the design of youth-focused financial and non-financial services. Recommended best practices include:

• Consider demographic data on the situation of youth in a country, national youth policies, and the regulatory environment governing provision of financial services for young people;
• Analyze supply of and demand for financial and non-financial services for youth according to various sources of information;
• Examine different segments of the youth market such as age, sex, geographic location, education, occupation and marital status;
• Base recommendations for prototypes of financial and non-financial services on market segmentation and research findings;
• Service delivery models for non-financial services must account for FSP and Youth Serving Organizations’ capacity and potential for scale.