In South Africa, the city Inkululeko is located in the Eastern Cape Province in the Makana Municipality. In Makana, the youth (15-24) unemployment rate is 54.6% and the rate of youth who are not involved in any employment, education or training programme is 33.7%. Furthermore, 61% percent of youth live in low-income households, thus limiting the opportunities for them to realise their potential.

In Kenya, youth are experiencing much higher unemployment rates than the rest of the Kenyan population. The Standard media group reported that, out of a working age population of 24 million, one in every six young Kenyans is unemployed. Data from the World Bank indicates that youth unemployment in Kenya has increased by 20 percent in the last 10 years, rising from 17.1 percent in 2011 to 17.4 percent in 2014. The large numbers of youth outside both higher education and the labour market are, according to the partners, root causes for poverty and marginilization among Kenyan youth. The partners therefore participate in the exchange project to make youth more employable and to involve more youth in academia or the labour market.

The partners cooperate to support youth from poor communities by providing academic and business training that will prepare them for gainful employment or future academic studies. The mutual goal for the partner organisations is to ensure that the youth gain leadership skills and get opportunities to use those skills. The aim is that they will demonstrate improved resilience in solving unemployment problems through well-defined project activities such as the use of skills in digital technology, agribusiness, community engagement, employability, entrepreneurship and literacy education.

In Inkululeko the participants develop social entrepreise skills at the Common Ground Cafe, where they will work on increasing youth-led leadership and involvement in the social business. At Destined Youth Initative Kenya the participants will focus on improving academic support to high school learners, and increasing social enterprise skills among the youth connected to Destined Youth. All exchange participants will work on outreach and workshop facilitation.