The 13th African Regional Meeting will be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from Monday 30 November to Thursday 3 December 2015.

The Meeting will bring together ILO’s tripartite constituents – governments, employers and workers – along with the political, economic and social actors of the world of work in Africa, to address the imperative of promoting an inclusive and job-rich growth through decent work in Africa.

This theme will be taken up in the Report that the ILO Director-General will present to the Meeting, entitled “Towards Sustainable and Inclusive Growth in Africa through Decent Work”.

The proposed agenda is to undertake a final review of progress made on the implementation of the “Decent Work Agenda in Africa, 2007-15” and to discuss and agree on strategic vision for the ILO in the Africa region.

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Towards Sustainable and Inclusive Growth in Africa through Decent Work: Report of the Director-General

The 13th African Regional Meeting convenes at a critical moment. A new era has opened up, making the achievement of sustainable growth with decent work a realistic prospect. Africa can indeed reap the benefits of a demographic dividend and draw on the energy of its young women and men, who are better trained and have easier access to new technology and knowledge networks than ever before. The continent taken as a whole enjoys high economic growth and relatively stable macroeconomic conditions. There is evidence of strong entrepreneurial spirit along with recognition of the transformative role of social protection. Africa also possesses natural resources that are in chronic shortage globally. Though much potential is going untapped, precluding more inclusive and sustainable growth, a better future is possible provided that policies move in the right direction.

There is growing awareness of the benefits of such a policy shift. Employment and decent work loom large in Africa’s vision of the future. A number of key events have underscored the central role of decent work for achieving a new development paradigm for Africa. Such events include the African Union (AU) Extraordinary Summit on Employment and Poverty Alleviation in Africa (Ouagadougou, September 2004); the Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development (Abuja, May 2005); the Conference of African Ministers (Ouagadougou, May 2006); and the 11th and 12th ILO African Regional Meetings held in Addis Ababa (April 2007) and Johannesburg (October 2011), respectively. More recently, the AU adopted a declaration making decent work a central goal of economic and social policies (January 2015) and it launched Agenda 2063, which provides a vision for seizing new development and investment opportunities.

In addition, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development represents a major landmark for the ILO’s tripartite constituents to make the Decent Work Agenda a national, subregional and regional objective. Already, decent work is central to the post-2015 framework. The outcome of the Financing for Development Conference of July 2015 and the United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference will also give direction to these efforts.

Importantly, Africa has gained greater policy space. The majority of African countries have weathered the global crisis, the prolonged recession in many advanced economies and the more recent slowdown in Asia and Latin America – key markets for African products – much better than would have been predicted on the basis of earlier experience. There is renewed interest in deepening economic integration among African countries, with a view to mobilizing internal engines of economic growth and job creation and making the continent less dependent on external factors.

The focus of the 13th African Regional Meeting should be to draw lessons from the past and plot the way forward, notably as regards how to overcome key obstacles to the implementation of the Decent Work Agenda so as to pave the way for a better economic and social future. The result should be clear directions for ILO presence in Africa. The ILO’s Programme and Budget for 2016-17 has defined priority outcomes for the Organization. A number of the substantive areas have been identified by constituents as being particularly urgent for Africa, including those on the formalization of the informal economy, promoting sustainable enterprises, creating and extending social protection floors, and decent work in the rural economy. The Regional Meeting has the opportunity to take into account the particular circumstances in Africa, including the fragility and conflict in a number of countries, and to tailor responses to the region.

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Background note for the panel on “Transition from the informal to the formal economy in Africa: The way forward”

In Africa, the vast majority of the labour force and micro- and small enterprises (MSEs) is operating in the informal economy. According to the most recent estimates, 66 per cent of the workers in non-agriculture employment in sub-Saharan Africa are in a situation of informal employment while this percentage is about 50 per cent in North Africa, with great disparities between countries. If subsistence agriculture is considered, the percentage of informal employment is even larger considering that more than half of total employment of the region is in agriculture.

Recent years were marked by a growing awareness among policy-makers, workers’ and employers’ organizations worldwide, including in Africa, about the need to move out of informality to promote inclusive growth and to achieve decent work for all. The adoption of a new international instrument, the Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy Recommendation (Recommendation No. 204), by the International Labour Conference in June 2015, achieved through strong tripartite consensus, provides the framework and the guidance for transition from the informal to the formal economy. The 13th African Regional Meeting is the first opportunity after the adoption of Recommendation No. 204, to discuss the informal economy and its characteristics in Africa and to reflect on the practical ways forward to promote the implementation of Recommendation No. 204 concerning transition from the informal to the formal economy.

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Background note for the panel on “Employment and new technologies: Opportunities for Africa’s youth”

Africa has made considerable progress in economic growth. However, in many cases, the pattern of growth has not been able to generate enough decent jobs to absorb the growing labour force. Almost half of new labour market entrants since 2005 took jobs in the informal economy and one third in agriculture – jobs often characterized by low productivity, wages and technological uptake. The challenge for African countries is therefore to transform their economies in an effort to generate more and better jobs and inclusive growth.

Technological change can be instrumental in this regard. Technological change may be defined broadly “as the process by which economies change over time in respect of the products they produce and the processes used to produce them”. The pattern of technological change not only shapes the quantity of jobs but also the type of jobs. And while new technologies may destroy jobs through automation and outsourcing to foreign countries, they also generate new types of jobs by developing new activities and insourcing, and can fundamentally transform task profiles of existing jobs.

A fundamental challenge for African countries aiming at generating more and better jobs is to steer technological development in a manner so as to promote patterns and paths of innovation that generate productive jobs that meet people’s needs and aspirations, and to ensure that those presently in the informal economy and low productivity sectors are not left behind.

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Discussion paper for the High-Level Dialogue “Decent work in Africa in the post-2015 context: Rights and social dialogue for inclusive and sustainable growth”

The Report of the Director-General to the Regional Meeting, Towards inclusive and sustainable development in Africa through decent work, describes the recent strengthening of the region’s economic performance while pointing out that social progress has been uneven. Reductions in extreme poverty have been accompanied by widening income inequality in many countries. Africa’s population is growing at a rapid pace creating a huge need for decent work opportunities for young women and men. The potential of the generations coming of work age between now and 2030 is enormous but a failure to meet their expectations could lead to an aggravation of social ills such as crime, civil conflict and mass migration.

The Goals agreed in the 2030 Agenda are ambitious, but were they not to be realized by 2030, the consequences for the world, and Africa in particular, could look very grim.

It will be important for labour, employment and social affairs ministries, as well as social partners to be well-prepared both for strategic discussions on the role of decent work in inclusive growth and sustainable development as well as on specific priorities such as social protection or youth employment.

Delegations to the Regional Meeting will wish to highlight the challenges faced by their country as an initial step in identifying policy priorities and monitoring progress. Such priorities could range from specific policy areas such as skill development or support to micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises, or capacity building of key institutions such as labour, employment and social affairs ministries, statistical institutes and, of course, the social partners.

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Multinational enterprises, development and decent work – Africa

Report prepared for the Special Session on the Promotion and Application of the ILO Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy in Africa

This report presents an overview of trends in foreign direct investment (FDI) in Africa and their opportunities for decent work; and of initiatives undertaken by governments and employers’ and workers’ organizations in the ILO member States in the region to raise awareness and promote the application of the recommendations set forth in the Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy.

FDI inflows into Africa continue to increase and intra-African FDI is on the rise. Natural resources continue to attract most of the investment, but the services and manufacturing sectors are drawing more investors from abroad. The amounts invested in projects are increasing and greater flows are going to capital investments, indicating some movement up the value chain in local production. The number of jobs created is also increasing as the investments expand in infrastructure and consumer-facing sectors. However, there is much room for further diversification of FDI projects and for policies to foster more linkages with local SMEs.

Although each country’s experience with FDI and operations of MNEs is unique, respondents’ views often converged on which areas of the MNE Declaration are relevant in their national context. All three groups considered the provisions regarding employment promotion to be relevant. The area of training was indicated as relevant by employers and governments. Workers and employers coincided in their appreciation of the principles on wages, benefits and conditions of work.