Bst practices in job creation: Lessons from Africa [EN/AR]
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The inability to find a means of income to generate a satisfying livelihood remains a problem across the globe. However, Africa’s unique and tumultuous past has created a problem much more entrenched than those facing many other emerging and developing markets.
The situation has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, which could push millions of people into extreme poverty, erasing at least five years of progress in fighting destitution.
Unemployment and underemployment remain pervasive across the continent, and demographic trends suggest that the situation will deteriorate further if not effectively addressed.
The nature of the unemployment problem, however, is such that implementing the correct policies and pursuing effective initiatives will go a long way in setting a country on a favourable trajectory.
This study examines 34 employment initiatives across 15 different countries, highlighting which features the most successful initiatives have in common.
The idiosyncratic nature of each country’s economic structure, labour force and state of socio-economic development means that there is little evidence to suggest that the success of a specific initiative can be replicated in another country without acknowledging these differences.
However, by ascertaining which broader approaches have proven successful across countries and identifying which focus areas have shown the most promising results, it is possible to gain insight into what constitutes best practice from an employment creation perspective.
Signalling commitment towards international best practices, not just from a policy approach perspective but from a legal standpoint as well, is another channel through which countries can learn from experiences elsewhere.
From the point of view of international labour standards, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) identifies cases of progress whenever countries that have ratified ILO conventions make progress in complying both in law and in practice with the conventions’ broad principles. A number of African nations have already ratified the ILO’s Employment Policy Convention (ILO, 2021).
As an initial step, identifying the most common phrases emphasised in the employment creation initiatives examined in this study already provides some insight into important success drivers. These phrases, depicted in a word cloud below, include partnership, skills development, youth employment, investment promotion, access to credit, etc.
While also elaborating on employment creation initiatives in certain African countries in more detail, this study also classifies each initiative or policy by the:
1) channel through which the project is being driven,
2) the focus area or target group of the intervention, as well as the
3) sector which is targeted or affected by the intervention.
By classifying the channel, focus area and targeted sector of each initiative it is possible to formulate a more holistic view of which general themes emerge.
PRIMARY CHANNELS OF INTERVENTIONS
Of the 34 employment initiatives identified in this report, over a third took the form of public-private partnerships. These partnerships vary in nature and scope, with some focusing on private sector skills development while others take the form of joint enterprises between government and private companies. For instance, Kenya’s Ajira Digital Programme, a government initiative that facilitates skills development in the private sector, has trained and provided over 50,000 work opportunities in the ICT sector (Ajira, 2020a). Kenya’s Ajira Digital Programme exemplifies the benefits of leveraging the private sector’s ability to identify opportunities and to adapt to change, thus creating a more robust labour market.
Source: UN Economic Commission for Africa