Abstract
Youth unemployment remains one of the most critical socioeconomic bottlenecks across Sub-Saharan Africa, directly impeding the realization of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8 (SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth). Over the past decade, Social Innovation Hubs (SIHs) have emerged as pivotal intermediaries designed to foster youth entrepreneurship, cultivate digital capabilities, and stimulate grassroots enterprise development. This study presents a comparative empirical evaluation of the efficacy of SIHs in driving SDG 8 targets across two leading innovation capitals: Nairobi, Kenya, and Cape Town, South Africa. Utilizing an explanatory sequential mixed-methods approach, the research surveyed 312 hub-affiliated youth entrepreneurs across six prominent hubs alongside 16 qualitative key informant interviews with hub directors and enterprise development practitioners over a 24-month horizon. Findings indicate that while SIHs substantially elevate short-term business survival rates and foundational digital competencies, their capacity to generate sustained, formal, and decent employment is sharply conditioned by regional structural realities. Nairobi hubs demonstrated superior agility in micro-enterprise formalization and mobile-first commercialization, whereas Cape Town hubs exhibited stronger integration of marginalized youth into advanced digital value chains, albeit constrained by acute spatial and socioeconomic segregation. Both ecosystems grapple with post-incubation capital cliffs and precarious gig-economy pathways. The paper concludes with actionable frameworks for community extension practitioners, municipal actors, and policy designers to align hub programming with holistic decent-work standards.
