Jobs and Growth in North Africa

Why Jobs and Growth?

Recent experience has shown that the relationship between job creation and the promotion of decent work, on the one hand, and economic growth, on the other, is complex and highly conditional on the growth path pursued. While it is clear that growth is often a necessary condition for promoting job creation and improving the quality of employment, it is by no means a sufficient one. Not only can growth be jobless, meaning that it does not positively affect employment rates, at least in the short to medium run, but it could also be associated with poor quality jobs and increased precariousness of employment. The aim of the programme is to examine the relationship between growth and labour market outcomes in order to identify the types of growth that are not only job-rich, but also promote improvements in job quality and decent work.

Countries in Focus – Home-grown Solutions for North Africa

While some of their characteristics differ widely, North African countries also have a lot in common – and a lot to learn from each other. Hence came the idea of creating the regional network and commissioning a series of diagnostics reports along with organizing periodical conferences and meetups to create an enabling environment for home-grown analysis and solutions. The programme targets five North African countries, namely, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Sudan.

Projects and Activities

A.   Report Series and Network Activities

Expert Group Meetings: The foundation of this programme is based on forming a network of experts from within the region to interact, explore, and provide policy advice on issues related to Jobs and Growth in North Africa. ERF and ILO/ADWA’ have organized the very first expert group meeting in December 2019 in Cairo to kick-off the programme. The objective of the meeting was to initiate dialogue and collaboration between researchers on the one hand and data producers from national statistical offices on the other, around the twin goals of promoting jobs and growth, and ultimately strengthening evidence-based policymaking. The upcoming expert group meeting will be held in July 2021. (Due to the pandemic, all future network meetups will be held virtually until further notice).

The first report on Jobs and Growth in North Africa will serve as a diagnostic assessment unearthing the paradoxical relationship between economic growth and job creation with detailed country cases studies on Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, and Tunisia. The report will start by reviewing the country’s growth trajectory since 2000 including the industrial pattern of GDP growth and employment and the patterns of public and private investment. The country reports will then discuss the trajectory of the major labour market outcomes in the country following the same period. Finally, the report will attempt to link the observed labour market outcomes to the country’s growth path and the policy drivers that have shaped it.

During one of most turbulent beginnings to a decade in recent history, we have observed the spread of a global pandemic with unprecedented socio-economic and financial consequences. Therefore, the second report on Jobs and Growth in North Africa will be focused on the COVID-19-induced recession to analyze short-term government response and to advise on potential medium-term recovery policies. In the analysis, the report will utilize the COVID-19 Monitor data that was recently collected/will be collected between October 2020 – August 2021 in three North African countries, namely, Egypt, Tunisia Morocco and Sudan.

B.   Covid-19 Monitor

To better understand the impact of the shock induced by the pandemic and assess the policy responses in a rapidly changing context, reliable data is imperative, and the need to resort to a dynamic data collection tool at a time where countries in the region are in a state of flux cannot be overstated. Therefore, a series of high frequency panel phone surveys were designed to assess the impact of the shock on livelihoods and labour markets in Egypt, Tunisia Morocco and Sudan. Based on the data collected, the project will produce a series of country case studies and country highlights as well as thematic research papers. The following tables illustrate the households and firms’ data collection waves per country:

About ADWA’

The ADWA’ project is funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). The project works at the policy-making level to support evidence-based decisions on key dimensions of the Decent Work Agenda, and it aims at promoting a job-rich growth International Labour Standards (ILS) and their application at the enterprise level. These three elements are fundamental for the economic development of the region and are essential to advance towards the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals. In other words, the overall objective of the project is to enhance target countries’ capacity for economic policy reform, boost the implementation of ILS, and address Decent Work deficits, including for women. The project targets four North African countries, namely, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria, and it falls under Outcome 1 of the overall ADWA’ project which consists of improving data collection, data analysis, and data use for economic policy reforms to steer towards a job-rich growth.