Skills development has been positioned as a solution to youth unemployment and economic exclusion across Africa; and the mainstream idea that is generally promoted defines and measures “skills” in a top-down way as qualifications, technical expertise or specific workplace attributes. As if skills may only be acquired through formal training or jobs. However, young people’s own accounts of their skills and how they came to possess them tell a different story. They tell of skills being forged outside schools, colleges and workplaces.