Africa's Got Work to Do: Employment Prospects in the New Century

Abstract

Estimates of the current and future structure of employment in sub-Saharan Africa (2005-20) are obtained based on household survey estimates for 28 countries and an elasticity-type model that relates employment to economic growth and demographic outcomes. Agriculture still employs the majority of the labor force although workers are shifting slowly out of the sector. Sub-Saharan Africa's projected rapid labor force growth, combined with a low baseline level of private sector wage employment, means that even if sub-Saharan Africa realizes another decade of strong growth, the share of labor force employed in private firms is not expected to rise substantially. Governments need to undertake measures to attract private enterprises that provide wage employment, but they also need to focus on improving productivity in the traditional and informal sectors as these will continue to absorb the majority of the labor force.

Priorities for Boosting Employment in Sub‐Saharan Africa: Evidence for Mozambique

“…To investigate this issue empirically, analytical simplifications are needed. Similar to the categorizations of Fox et al (2013) we distinguish workers into three jobs categories, each of which represents a bundle of attributes. These are workers in: (i) unwaged, household agriculture (HAG); (ii) non-agricultural informal firms (NIF); and (iii) the formal wage sector (FW).…”

Household Enterprises and Poverty Reduction in Sub‐Saharan Africa

“…However, as the analysis of Fox et al. () has shown, given the rapid growth of the labour force in low‐ and middle‐income SSA, there is virtually no possibility that wage employment alone will absorb new entrants to the labour force , even if policies were able to generate an employment growth as rapid as Vietnam achieved between 1990 and 2010. Mozambique, with a poorly‐educated labour force and limited infrastructure, is even further behind countries such as Ghana and Kenya, where private wage employment is over 10% of total primary employment.…”

“…In essence, Mozambique and many other SSA countries, through their development plans, assume that poverty reduction through improvements in earnings and productivity is only possible in the private wage employment and in agriculture sectors (or at least it is so much higher in these that only these two sectors warrant attention). 11 However, as the analysis of Fox et al (2013) has shown, given the rapid growth of the labour force in low-and middle-income SSA, there is virtually no possibility that wage employment alone will absorb new entrants to the labour force, even if policies were able to generate an employment growth as rapid as Vietnam achieved between 1990 and 2010. Mozambique, with a poorlyeducated labour force and limited infrastructure, is even further behind countries such as Ghana and Kenya, where private wage employment is over 10% of total primary employment.…”

Asian rice economy changes and implications for sub-Saharan Africa

“…In SSA, in contrast, most countries have not entered a rapid demographic transition with falling birth rates similar to that in many Asian countries, and the growth in the share of GDP accounted for by manufacturing has been much slower than in Asia. For example, the manufacturing output of East Asian low-middle income countries in 2010 accounted for roughly double the corresponding output of SSA (Fox et al, 2013). Thus, rural wage rate growth in SSA is likely to be much slower in the next 10 years than Asian rice-producing countries.…”