Advancing Disability Inclusion Across The WAEMU Region

Ensuring Every Young Person Can Fulfil Their Potential.

For the Mastercard Foundation, disability inclusion (opens in a new tab) is not a separate area of work. We work with Organizations of Persons with Disabilities, governments, employers, and program partners to identify barriers, improve accessibility, strengthen partner capacity, and embed inclusion throughout program design, implementation, budgeting, monitoring, and learning. We are committed to ensuring that young persons with disabilities, especially young women, have equitable access to opportunities to learn, earn, and lead, so they can contribute fully to the economic and social transformation of their communities.

Disability inclusion is essential to advancing equity, reducing poverty, and building stronger economies. By working with young people, Organizations of Persons with Disabilities, program partners, governments, employers, and financial institutions, we can create more inclusive pathways to education, entrepreneurship, and dignified and fulfilling work across the region.

The Challenge In Numbers In The WAEMU Region

Across the WAEMU region, disability is still significantly undercounted, especially in rural communities. While differences between countries may reflect varying levels of poverty, conflict, and access to services, they also point to the need for stronger, more consistent data collection and disability measurement. Better data is essential to understanding the barriers young persons with disabilities face and to designing programs that respond to their realities.

According to the International Labour Organization, across WAEMU countries, approximately 7 to 13 percent of adults aged 15 and above report some level of functional difficulty, while around 2 to 5 percent report a lot of difficulty or are unable to perform any activity.

Because disability remains undercounted across the WAEMU region, particularly in rural communities, available data may not fully capture the number of persons with disabilities or the barriers they experience.

Behind the data are young persons with disabilities who are building businesses, creating jobs, supporting their communities, and opening new pathways for others. Their experiences demonstrate what becomes possible when education, finance, infrastructure, technology, and professional networks are designed to be accessible to everyone. By sharing these stories, we can challenge misconceptions and highlight their contribution, while also identifying practical approaches that program partners can adapt in their own work. In this way, stories become not only a source of inspiration but also tools for learning and improving program design.

Young people with disabilities living in rural communities often face interconnected barriers that limit their ability to access opportunities and participate fully in society. Distance remains a significant challenge, with schools, training centres, healthcare services, financial institutions, and places of work often located far from where they live, making it more difficult to access the resources and support needed to thrive.

Addressing these barriers requires more than extending existing services. It involves designing programs that account for transportation, communication, accessibility, local partnerships, assistive technologies, and the realities of rural livelihoods from the outset.

In Senegal, 28.8 percent of rural households include at least one person with a disability, highlighting the scale of the challenge in rural communities. Poor transportation, weak connectivity, inaccessible information, and limited access to assistive products further deepen exclusion, particularly for young women, low-income households, and communities affected by conflict or fragility.

This is particularly important for agriculture, rural development, and economic opportunity programs seeking to reach young people where they live and work.