Sub-Saharan Africa faces the challenge of creating more than 72-million jobs over the next 26 years to 2050 while upgrading precarious, poorly paying posts into “decent” ones.
That’s the conclusion of the 2024 Global Employment Trends for Youth report published this week by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which defines a decent job as one that offers “adequate income, security and stability so that workers can support their families and enjoy a decent, full life”.
The UN body warns that the urgency to upgrade existing jobs is more critical than the creation of new ones. That’s the only way the continent can slow down the “outmigration” of its young people to other African countries and elsewhere in the world.
Outmigration is not a sustainable solution, says the ILO, because of dangerous migration routes and hostile environments in the countries to which people migrate in search of a better life.
On the subcontinent, SA has the most pronounced jobs challenge. The ILO puts Sub-Saharan Africa’s average youth unemployment at 8.9%. SA’s, according to the recent Reserve Bank quarterly bulletin, is between five and seven times the subcontinent’s average. It’s 60% for 15- to 24-year-olds and more than 40% for those between 25 and 34 years.
Two factors explain Sub-Saharan Africa’s jobs challenge.
First, it is the most youthful continent, with a median age of 18 versus 40-49 elsewhere. “By 2050, young Africans are expected to constitute more than one-third (35%) of global youth; that is, one in every three young people on Earth will be of African origin.”
The subcontinent’s young labour force will continue to grow, adding 72.6-million potential workers between 2023 and 2050. If these young workers are to be connected to economic activity, 72.6-million cumulative jobs must be created over the years to 2050.
Second, young people are “employed” in precarious jobs. Nearly three in four do what the ILO describes as insecure work; more than one in three now earns less than the median wage. And more than one in two works in agriculture. That explains why Sub-Saharan Africa’s young people were the most stressed globally about losing jobs, according to the latest World Value Survey. By contrast, their American counterparts felt less financially independent than previous generations because of limited wage growth.
The challenge for Africa is thus not only the creation of 72.6-million new jobs but the upgrading of existing ones. The upgrading of precarious jobs into decent ones matters for reasons of far more than economics. The ability to earn a decent income is a big enabler of a young person’s transition to adulthood.
The quality components of a job — secure and well paying — bring the confidence that “enables young people to transition to the next steps of adulthood”.
The markers of that transition, according to the ILO, include the ability to leave a parental nest, and gaining financial independence. In some cultures financial independence doesn’t mean leaving the parent home but the ability to contribute towards its expenses.
“For youth in urban Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, full-time work rarely follows schooling, and pathways to marriage and family formation are complicated by livelihood insecurity. But even in such settings ‘self-reliance’, which would normally necessitate earning an income, is taken to be a principal marker of adulthood.”
Where these transitional pathways to adulthood are difficult, societal problems develop, including crime and other ills. That’s what KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi was talking about recently when he said statistics show that crime in the province is a black problem. KwaZulu-Natal is the second most populous province after Gauteng, with an estimated 12.31-million people — 19.5% of the country’s total.
The recent protests in Kenya, in which young people were most prominent, also bear testimony to these warnings. Young Kenyans feel squeezed between stagnant incomes, mostly from precarious jobs, and the rising cost of living. The government wanted to add higher taxes to the mix, which would have worsened their precarity.
The ILO warns that Africa’s imminent “youthquake” means the creation of new jobs and transformation of existing jobs into decent ones for the youth “becomes a critical issue for social justice and for the future of the global economy”. Youthquake is generally defined as an important social or political change started by the youth.
• Sikhakhane, a former spokesperson for the finance minister, National Treasury and SA Reserve Bank, is editor of The Conversation Africa. He writes in his personal capacity.
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