Work and Income for Young Men and Women in Africa

Poverty and inequality are among the root causes of armed conflict, instability, and irregular migration from Africa. In the context of high population growth rates, enhancing decent employment for young men and women is a key policy priority to reduce poverty and inequality because youth are three times as likely to be un(der)employed relative to adults. Furthermore, while many interventions that promote employability of young men and women focus on skills training, the question on where these trained youth will find work and income remains unexplored, particularly considering that some economies lack structural transformation and are characterized by fragility. Although there are various studies that have been conducted to understand the trends and drivers of youth employment, there is limited robust evidence on which sectors can have the greatest potential to create jobs for young people.

The Economic Research Forum (ERF), The African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) have launched a collaborative research project seeking to identify the economic sectors with the greatest potential to increase youth employment in Africa.  The project is for one year, divided into three complementary phases. The first phase consists of writing and publishing framework papers which are to help determine some key characteristics required to achieve decent youth employment in Africa. The second phase, would be a thorough a call for papers, to be launched in January 2021, with the aim to study and compare between 10 case-study countries in terms of job creation and income generation with gender perspective, allowing for exhaustive policy recommendations. Finally, the last phase involves policy outreach and knowledge management activities such as publications and national dissemination of research and workshops.

A call for proposals for research projects that are in line with the collaborative research project’s objectives was launched and two research projects were eventually selected as MENA case studies. The first country case study was on Egypt with a research paper on “Identifying activities for greater employment generation in Egypt: An input-output analysis” authored by Dr. Iman Al-Ayouty and the second country case study was on Tunisia with a research paper on “Structural change, productivity and jobs creation: Evidence from Tunisia” authored by Drs. Mohamed Amara, Faycel Zidi and Hela Jeddi.

ERF acknowledges the generous financial contribution of the  African Economic Research Consortium (AERC).