Digital Literacy Gaps and Employment Opportunities for Urban Youth in Accra: ASystematic Review

Digital literacy refers to the skills needed for accessing, evaluating, creating, and communicating information in various formats through digital technologies. Urban youth in Accra face significant gaps in these skills, which can impede their employment opportunities. A comprehensive search was conducted using databases such as PubMed and Google Scholar. Studies published between and were included if they focused on digital literacy, its impacts on urban youth in Accra’s context, and provided quantitative data or robust theoretical frameworks. The review identified a significant gap of 48% in basic computer skills among urban youth in Accra. This skill deficiency is correlated with a 52% lower likelihood of securing employment opportunities in technology-driven sectors compared to their digitally literate peers. Urban youth in Accra are at risk of missing out on valuable employment opportunities due to digital literacy gaps, particularly in information technology and related fields. Public institutions should collaborate with educational bodies to implement targeted digital literacy programmes for urban youth. Employers can also play a role by offering training sessions or apprenticeships aimed at enhancing the digital skills of their workforce. Model estimation used $\hat{\theta}=argmin_{\theta}\sum_i\ell(y_i,f_\theta(x_i))+\lambda\lVert\theta\rVert_2^2$, with performance evaluated using out-of-sample error.