International Business and Trade Graduate Outcomes: Pathways, Patterns, and Skill Implications

**Project Overview** This Open Science Framework (OSF) project, *African Graduate Futures: Career Pathways, Skills, and Competitiveness*, curates and disseminates a series of empirical manuscripts that investigate how higher-education programmes across the continent translate into employment, entrepreneurship, and postgraduate study. The flagship study, “International Business and Trade Graduate Outcomes: Pathways, Patterns, and Skill Implications,” provides a robust tracer analysis of 339 alumni from African Leadership University’s International Business and Trade programme, revealing employment rates exceeding regional norms, exceptionally high venture-creation activity, and critical skill patterns that underpin graduate success . Building on this foundation, the project will archive subsequent country- or programme-specific manuscripts that apply comparable mixed-methods designs to illuminate graduate trajectories in other disciplines and institutions. **Aims and Scholarly Contribution** The project pursues three interrelated aims. First, it offers transparent, open-access datasets and analyses that help policymakers, educators, and industry leaders understand whether—and how—African tertiary education is closing employability and skills gaps. Second, by employing consistent tracer-study protocols, it enables cross-case comparison, thereby refining theory on human-capital formation, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and skills-mismatch dynamics in emerging economies. Third, it models rigorous, reproducible research practices for scholar-practitioners committed to evidence-based reform. **Scope and Methodological Framework** Each manuscript in the series adopts a convergent mixed-methods approach: quantitative alumni-survey data and administrative records establish baseline outcome patterns, while qualitative interviews and document analysis contextualise sectoral, geographic, and skills-specific nuances. Analyses are situated within global benchmarks (e.g., OECD, WEF) and framed by human-capital, new-institutional, and capability theories. All instruments, anonymised datasets, and analysis code will be deposited here to facilitate replication and secondary synthesis. **Expected Outputs** The OSF project will host: (a) peer-reviewed manuscripts; (b) de-identified raw and cleaned datasets; (c) codebooks and statistical scripts (R/Python); (d) interview protocols and thematic matrices; and (e) reflective memos linking empirical insights to curriculum design and policy recommendations. Each item will be version-controlled and licensed under CC-BY 4.0 to maximise reuse. **Relevance to Stakeholders** For universities, findings offer actionable evidence to recalibrate curricula toward digital-literate, future-proof skillsets. Employers gain granular understanding of graduate competencies across sectors and regions, informing recruitment and in-house training. Development partners and ministries may leverage the synthesis to track progress on Continental Education Strategy and AfCFTA human-capital goals. Researchers benefit from reusable data that enlarge the comparative education evidence base on the Global South. **Data Governance and Ethics** All studies secure informed consent, conform to institutional ethics guidelines, and remove personally identifying information before upload. Sensitive geographic or demographic variables are masked or aggregated when necessary to preserve participant anonymity while retaining analytical value. **Timeline and Sustainability** The series launches with the IBT tracer manuscript. Forthcoming papers—currently in advanced draft—examine STEM graduate pathways in East Africa and social-science alumni trajectories in francophone West Africa. Updates, including replication files and pre-registration details for new studies, will be added semi-annually. Long-term stewardship is assured through OSF’s preservation fund, while citation metrics and download statistics will guide iterative improvements and community engagement. By foregrounding rigorous, transparent, and context-specific analyses, this OSF project aspires to become a continental hub for scholarship that informs strategy, strengthens curricula, and ultimately enhances the career prospects of Africa’s burgeoning graduate population.