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By Rumbidzai Adebayo
“The future belongs to the youth, but only if we prepare them for it.”
Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, Former President of Tanzania
As the great Mwalimu aptly put it, for Africa to win the future, it must invest in its youth, and this investment must begin where their real futures are shaped. After all, nearly 70 per cent of Africa’s population will not shape their destinies in conference halls, but in classrooms, labs, and workshops where ideas take form.
Consider Tadala, a secondary school student in rural Malawi who is bright, curious, and captivated by robotics videos on a shared family phone. She dreamed of becoming an engineer, yet she had never met one. Her school had no lab. Her teachers, including Mr. Banda, who taught with dedication despite limited resources, had little exposure to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) pathways. Without someone to show her what was possible, her potential risked fading. Her story is the norm. Across the continent, millions of talented young Africans sit in classrooms without the mentorship that transforms ambition into achievement.
Why Mentorship Matters
Mentorship in STEM is not a soft extra; it is the infrastructure that helps learners navigate unequal access, gender barriers, and fragmented job markets. It is essential for training and retaining researchers, engineers, and technologists capable of developing homegrown solutions. In practice, mentorship is what turns STEM education into STEM careers, guiding students past gatekeeping systems, supporting early career researchers, and building the professional identity that curbs brain drain. It is the quiet force that will determine whether Africa’s youth bulge becomes a demographic dividend or a demographic bomb.
STEM Equity Starts with Mentorship and Exposure
This is why the United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on Africa (OSAA) Africa Dialogue Series (ADS) 2024, held under the AU’s Year of Education, cautions that without deliberate investment in mentorship and exposure, Africa’s STEM pipeline will continue to shrink. Fewer than 25 per cent of tertiary students pursue STEM, and in 17 of 21 countries with sex disaggregated data, women make up 16 per cent or less of STEM graduates, despite performing on par with boys. Girls face limited exposure, too few role models, and weak mentorship networks that push them out of the workforce long before they reach it. Women remain under 30 per cent of STEM professionals in many countries, underscoring the urgent need for sustained mentorship to help close this gap.
Digital and Industry Context: Why Mentorship Matters Now
This urgency is heightened by Africa’s uneven digital and industrial landscape, where weak connectivity limits who mentorship can actually reach. Strong digital foundations are now essential for linking young people to mentors, resources and professional networks they would otherwise lose. Yet the report, prepared by the UN Office of the Special Adviser on Africa (OSAA), shows that only 38 per cent of Africans use the internet, 4G reaches just 60 per cent, and 5G only 11 per cent, while industrial upgrading remains modest, with manufacturing at roughly 10 per cent of GDP, and informality dominates employment. In this context, mentored pathways, internships, apprenticeships and alumni networks become the most reliable bridges into first jobs and long-term .
Mentorship Initiatives are already delivering results or producing impact
Mentorship initiatives across the continent already show what is possible when structured guidance meets talent. In Kenya, the is helping early-career researchers strengthen their ideas, leadership skills and publication pathways through its digital mentorship platform, giving first-generation scientists support they would not otherwise access. is widening the pipeline of future female innovators by pairing girls in underserved communities with mentors who introduce them to coding, robotics and entrepreneurship. connects learners with mentors and experts across multiple countries, opening doors to opportunities they would otherwise never access.
Industry is stepping up too: in South Africa, the exposes learners from under-resourced schools to real engineering environments and high-growth career paths.
Together, these initiatives show that mentorship is foundational, turning curiosity into direction, early exposure into confidence and interest into lasting achievement. STEM success grows not from textbooks alone but from networks, role models and a sense of belonging that helps students overcome systemic barriers.
Why mentorship works: an Asian success story
South Korea offers a clear example of what happens when mentorship is embedded across an entire talent system. In the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Korea ranked among the world’s top performers and showed no gender gap in science achievement, which is evidence that supportive learning environments and can unlock student potential.
Korea’s real advantage comes after school, where mentorship is built into workplace culture through senior?to?junior coaching, project?based apprenticeships and rotation systems that , especially women, build confidence, networks and long?term career stability.
The lesson for Africa is clear: when mentorship follows learners from the classroom into the workplace, aspirations rise, persistence grows, and barriers fall. Mentorship is not an add-on but the engine that keeps talent moving.
From Mentorship as Charity to Mentorship as Strategy
If Africa is to build and retain world-class STEM talent, mentorship must shift from a goodwill gesture to a coordinated strategy led by governments, working alongside industry and the African diaspora. Setting standards, resourcing schools, incentivizing mentors and strengthening pathways into industry are all essential to make mentorship a powerful driver of future ready STEM careers. The recommendations that follow outline the practical steps needed to achieve this.
- Establish national and regional mentorship compacts that unite governments, universities, industry and the African diaspora around clear targets and measurable outcomes.
- Embed mentorship across the entire education to employment pathway, ensuring every learner from TVET to university to early career has both a technical mentor and a career mentor.
- Prioritize girls and underserved learners by building mentorship ladders that support them from secondary school through their first jobs and into leadership roles.
- Professionalize mentorship by training mentors in coaching, feedback, inclusion and safeguarding, ensuring programmes scale with quality.
- Expand digital connectivity to power mentorship, using reliable internet access and digital platforms to connect young people, especially in rural and remote areas, to mentors across Africa and the diaspora.
- Strengthen existing institutions rather than creating new ones, ensuring every scholarship, centre of excellence and technical pathway includes structured mentorship, making it a backbone of Africa’s future STEM workforce
Conclusion
Mentorship is the bridge that turns education into capability, capability into careers and careers into national development. For Africa to secure its place in the global knowledge economy, mentorship must evolve from an informal practice into an intentional, system-wide function embedded in schools, workplaces, and national skills strategies, so it can build competence, confidence, networks, and opportunities at scale.
Similar to Tadala, mentorship will give many young Africans a real shot at success. Without mentorship, her potential, like that of millions of young Africans, risked fading. When a mentor finally entered her life, she gained real STEM exposure, new networks, and the confidence to imagine herself in places she had never seen. Her journey is not exceptional; it is a glimpse of what becomes possible when mentorship is intentional, structured, and valued.