The
African Development Bank (AfDB) Group has launched its innovative thinking new
policy research document “Creating Decent Jobs: Strategies, Policies, and
Instruments,” about Africa’s conventional employment issues.
The report elicited strong presentations and a
lively debate during the event which took place in the Babacar N’Diaye
Auditorium at the Bank’s headquarters, attended by senior management,
diplomats, staff, and media representatives, a release copied to the Ghana News
Agency said.
Mr Charles Boamah, the Bank’s Senior Vice
President, introduced the issue of employment as being “at the top of the
agenda of every African leader”, and said that the report was “the first of its
kind in challenging and unveiling some of the misconceptions that many experts
have about the nature of under-employment and unemployment in Africa.
“The report signals the start of some fresh
thinking about the nature of employment creation on the continent and clarifies
which development strategies and policy interventions are needed for low-income
countries in Africa”, Mr Boamah said.
He predicted that the report would “serve as a
reference document on employment in Africa for some years to come.”
Introducing the report, Celestin Monga, the
Bank’s Chief Economist, said part of its appeal was in applying innovative
thinking to conventional employment issues. For example, one problem identified
was that domestic economic progress was often assessed by the allocation of
public funding to priority sectors or by analysing the number of reforms
carried out to improve the business environment.
In this context, he said several of the world’s
top-performing countries had low rankings for the ease of doing business.
Mr Monga said that the official unemployment
figures of many African countries were so unrealistically low that policymakers
found it difficult to explain how demand for labour in markets was so buoyant.
Africa was also the world region with the highest proportion of its workforce
in vulnerable employment, which served to hide rather than clarify the
essential issue of employment in Africa. A new model for measuring employment
that related to actual conditions in Africa was needed, he said. The report
should also be seen as a manifesto for African jobs.
He praised the painstaking work of his
co-editors, and particularly recommended a focus paper written by Andinet
Woldemichael, principal research economist, entitled “The Missing Women in
African Labor Markets” in the report.
In the face of rapidly growing populations and
heightened risks of social unrest or discontent, jobless growth was the most
serious concern for African policymakers, said Abebe Shimeles, manager in the
Chief Economist’s complex, who spoke on the highlights of the report.
“One problem”, he added, “was already well known
– that employment and unemployment needed to be more closely defined in their
relative context, a task that had already caused difficulties in other
development finance institutions. Traditional labour market economists were not
capable of accurately defining the particular African employment phenomenon”.
He said the status of the ministries of work or
labour in many African countries was often not important enough to be
considered as a critical policy sector, reflecting the low priority given to
making a serious difference to the continental employment challenge facing all
the African countries.
Mr Mamadou Toure, the Ivorian Minister of Youth
Promotion and Employment, drew attention to the interconnections that existed
around the jobs issue.
He said, “This cannot be resolved on its own,
and certainly not without considering carefully other related aspects, such as
skills, education, training, enterprise and social services.”
Professor Tchetche N’Guessan, of the University
of Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Cocody, Cote d’Ivoire; and Mr Freddy Tchala, CEO of
MTN in Cote d’Ivoire also spoke, discussing different aspects of employment,
education, training, skills and government measures for the promotion of youth
entrepreneurs.GNA