Africa is creating jobs but needs to do it in quantity and with speed

The Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Mr. Carlos Lopes says that a number of people employed in decent jobs on the continent is still a fraction of the Africa’s labor force since two out of three jobs are still precarious types of occupation.

Lopes said that the continent is already creating many jobs but not with quantity and speed that are required.

He made the statements while discussing on a panel during the annual Meetings of the African Development Bank (AfDB) in Kigali on the topic: “Where are the jobs?”

“In order to have decent jobs on the continent, a number of the things have to happen, starting with the policy coherence, strong leadership, conducive environment for industrialization, turning agriculture into agribusiness with increased productivity and services becoming more formal rather than precarious economies”, said Lopes.

In many African countries, the informal economy is the largest provider of jobs for youth. For instance, in the Democratic Republic of Congo 96.2percent of young workers are claimed to be informally employed; in Cameroon the percentage would be 88.6 and in Zambia, it is said that no less than 99 percent of working teenagers work in the informal economy.

Lopes said that Africa has to go beyond producing raw materials and build dynamic and competitive manufacturing sectors capable of processing the continent’s abundant minerals and agricultural products. “Through industrialization we could transform the continent. We would enter the global value chain with much more value, and won’t export our jobs any more,” he explains.

Africa has the skills needed for the type of manufacturing jobs required. “Already 32percent of Africans have a secondary degree education”, said Lopes. The ECA Executive Secretary also made a strong case for African agriculture, saying that this sector needs to do a quite significant shift.

“We need to move to agribusiness, and make sure that our markets are more integrated. If you produce bananas in one country, it can be exported to the neighbor, without having all these very difficult tariff and non-tariff barriers that we see on our borders,” said Lopes.

Right now Africa has lowest Agricultural productivity in the world. In average, it has about 1.5 tons per hectare. “This is very low and it has not changed much for the last 20 years”, Lopes said.

Lopes believes that the number of assets that are in are on the continent as sovereign wealth fund, adding the money lost due to mispricing of Africa’s rich natural resources could reach to one trillion dollars in capital and could be mobilize for Africa’s development.

Lopes concluded that Africa has all the ingredients for its transformation and should not miss this opportunity. “Commodity prices have gone up, exports from Africa are also going up due to more demand from emerging economies, middle class is growing, better urbanized cities, services are expanding, the continent has the young and growing population and better economic governance, in terms of interconnectivity, Africa has more cellphones than India or Europe or the US. All these are positive trends that could boost Africa’s transformation. (EAC)