ITCILO/ACTRAV COURSE A Capacity Building for Members of Youth Committees on the Youth Employment Crisis in Africa 26 to 30 August 2013 Pathways to Achieving Decent Work for Young People in Africa

Give Young People Multiple Pathways To Decent Work The 2005 ILC Resolution concerning youth employment called for an approach that combines macroeconomic and microeconomic interventions, addresses both labour demand and supply, both the quantity and the quality of employment Integrated and coherent approach Macro and micro interventions Labour demand and supply Quantity and quality of employment

2005 ILC Resolution Policy Areas OBJECTIVES POLICY AREAS Increase Employment Creation Facilitate Transition to WorkProtection Participation Growth Strategy Entrepreneurship and Self Employment Cooperatives PEPs Education and Training Labour Market Policies Labour Standards Social Protection

600 Million Jobs Needed: A Formidable Challenge Given The Current Economic Crisis …If No Change In The Policy Environment 40 million new labour market entrants annually 200 million already unemploye d in of which 75 million are youth 600 million jobs over the next 10 years

Aspirations for Jobs, Freedom and Social Justice are Triggering Youth Led Protests Across the World

The 2012 ILC General Discussion of Youth Employment Crisis

Continues… The 2012 ILC:  Reviewed the magnitude and characteristics of the youth employment crisis;  Considered the high levels of unemployment and underemployment problems plaguing young workers;  Discussed the decline in the quality of jobs available for young people, detachment from the labour market and the slow and difficult transition to decent work;  Drew lessons from the implementation of the 2005 ILC Resolution concerning Youth Employment;

Continues…  Assessed policy innovations in a range of areas;  Took note of the discussions at the Youth Employment Forum that gathered 100 young leaders in Geneva from 23 to 25 May 2012;  Underscored a renewed commitment for stepping up the implementation of the 2005 ILC Resolution;  Agreed on a set of conclusions entitled: “The Youth Employment Crisis: A Call for Action.”

The Call for Action Is a Global Strategy and Action Plan that:  Provides a series of guiding principles and a detailed policy portfolio of tried and tested measured;  Emphasizes the key role of partnerships;  Declares that “youth are part of the solution, their voices should be heard, their creativity engaged, their rights respected…”;  Calls on “governments, the multilateral system, the G20 and all relevant national, regional and international organisations” to tackle the issue, and asks the ILO to take a leadership role.

Guiding Principles  Guiding principles include: Take into account the diversity of country situations and the need for context-specific responses; Full employment should be a key objective of macroeconomic policies; Ensure effective policy coherence; Promote participation and involvement of the social partners in policy development through social dialogue;

Continues… Ensure a well-balanced policy mix; Ensure respect for the rights of young workers and gender-sensitivity; Address mismatches which limits young peoples’ access to employment opportunities; Promote: Youth entrepreneurship; Innovative and multi-stakeholder partnerships and networking relationships;

Continues… Inspire context-specific and concrete action; Monitor, evaluate and report about policies and programmes to inform further action; Youth are part of the solution. Their voices should be heard, their creativity engaged, and their rights respected in dealing with the youth employment crisis.

Five Main Policy Areas of Intervention Employment and Economic Policies for Youth Employment Employability – Education, Training & Skills, and the School- to-Work Transition Labour Market Policies Youth Entrepreneurship and Self- Employment Rights for Young People

The Way Forward Employment & economic policies for youth employment:  Assign centrality to youth employment in the DWCPs and National Development Frameworks through the implementation of policies that promote full, productive and freely chosen employment, informed by the Employment Policy Convention, 1964 (No. 122).  Promote pro-employment macroeconomic policies and fiscal incentives.  Adopt integrated and time-bound national action plans for decent employment with measurable outcomes.

Continues…  Prioritize job-generating growth policies and programmes such as: Countercyclical policies and demand-side interventions; Public employment programmes; Employment guarantee schemes; Labour-intensive infrastructure; Labour-intensive technology and rural development; Wage and training subsidies; Active employment policies, particularly for young people.  Direct job creation through labour-intensive public work projects and programmes.

Continues…  Anchor a job-friendly development agenda in industrial and sectoral policies that can: Facilitate structural transformation informed by long-term development strategies, industrial policy and industrial development; Contribute to an environmentally-sustainable economy; Boost greater public and private investment in sectors that create decent jobs for young people.  Involve social partners in policy decision-making through regular tripartite consultations.  Establish and strengthen monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to measure impact and improve policy instruments.  Promote an enabling policy & regulatory environment to fast-track the transition to formal employment and decent jobs.

Continues… Employability – Education, training & skills, & school-to-work transition:  Guarantee access by all to free quality and relevant basic education;  Improve the links between education, training and the WoW through: Social dialogue on skills mismatch; Standardization of qualifications in response to labour market needs.  Improve the range & types of apprenticeships by: Complementing learning at the workplace with more structured institutional learning; Upgrading the training skills of master crafts-persons and trainers overseeing the apprenticeships; Including literacy training and livelihood skills; Strengthening community involvement, especially to open more occupations for youth.  Expand the reach of formal education & training through distance-learning strategies & support for TOT;

Continues…  Include job-search techniques & career guidance in school curricula;  Set-up employment information and assistance services including: Job seekers registration services; Counselling centres for employment; Job vacancies registration services; Vocational guidance and counselling centres; Matching job seekers to job vacancies centres.  Social partners to: Contribute to the design, implementation and monitoring of education, training and lifelong learning policies and programmes aimed at improving responsiveness to the WoW; Engage in CB of terms and conditions of work of interns & apprentices; Encourage enterprises to provide internship & apprenticeships places; Raise awareness about labour rights of young workers, interns and apprentices.

Continues… Labour Market Policies:  Review LMP&P to ensure that they contribute to job creation for young people.  Allocate adequate resources to labour market policies, including PEPs as key instruments to promote youth employment.  Integrate & sequence various components of ALMP targeting both demand and supply measures to ease transitions from school to work.  Strengthen the LMIS as a core instrument for decision-making and enhancing job-search skills.  Link income support to active work search and participation in ALMPs.  Focus on rural youth as a priority group through targeted development policies and programmes.

Continues… Youth Entrepreneurship and Self-employment:  Provide an enabling environment for SMEs, cooperatives and solidarity economy that support youth entrepreneurship to thrive.  Promote youth entrepreneurship through improvement of their access to productive assets.  Facilitate access by MEs to public procurement, in line with the provisions of the Labour Clauses (Public Contracts) Conventions, 1949 (No. 94), where ratified.  Facilitate transition of young entrepreneurs from informality to formality.  Include entrepreneurship into the educational curricula.  Social partners to engage governments in the design and delivery of entrepreneurship polices and programmes.

Continues… Rights for young people:  Adopt a rights-based approach to youth employment by ensuring that policies to promote youth employment do not disregard nor weaken the protection of labour rights;  Ensure young people receive fair treatment and are accorded rights at work;  Commit to develop youth employment policies consistent with national obligations and taking into account ILS;  Ensure that labour laws and CBAs are effectively enforced;  Extend adequate Social Protection to young workers to facilitate their transitions into stable employment and DW;  Promote and protect young workers’ rights to organise and bargain collectively;

Continues…  Target OSH promotion and training to young workers, including pre- employment and induction training;  Ensure that minimum wages set either by law or CBAs for young workers are observed;  Develop a coherent and consistent wage-policy framework in consultation with social partners;  Design, monitor and properly supervise policy measures such as wage subsidies to guarantee that they are time-bound, targeted and not abused;  Embed workers’ rights in school curricula as an effective way of improving attitudes towards workers’ rights;

Continues…  Establish and strengthen monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to measure impact and to improve policy instruments;  Employers’ organisations should give serious consideration, as appropriate, to, and workers’ organisations should: -Promote and encourage the greater participation and representation of young people in their organisations; -Increase young people’s voice in social dialogue; -Raise awareness of their members about young workers’ rights; -Actively participate in the implementation of young workers’ rights.

ILO Support Strategy for Youth Employment Pillars Outcomes 1.Youth employment is mainstreamed into national development frameworks and employment policies 2.National action plans on youth employment are developed and implemented 3.National programmes for decent work for youth implemented by governments in cooperation with social partners 4.Information dissemination, awareness raising, training or outreach strategy on youth KNOWLEGDE Research and evaluation carried out to assess impact of youth employment policies and programmes ADVOCACY Youth employment partnerships established at global, regional and national levels TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE Interventions to improve employment and income of youth implemented and evaluated OBJECTIVE: Young men and women to have access to decent employment and income opportunities

Continues…

Holistic Approach to Africa’s Youth Unemployment Crisis in Africa  A comprehensive model that caters for: Rural development Rural-urban migration Preparation of young people for the labour market Investment in agriculture  Government should create enabling environment to promote investments including: Provision of power Maintaining law and order, and adequate security Revision of schools curricula to incorporate skills and enterprise development Provision of incentives to SMEs that promotes student internships and graduate trainee programs Provision of support to community-based projects that create jobs for young people

Why Agriculture Should be Africa’s Number One Priority?  Over 60% of Africa’s economically active population works in and lives from agriculture;  Over 1/3 of total value-added comes form agriculture;  Africa imports about US$50 billion worth of food every year;  The continuing neglect by governments, international development lenders and policy advisers, carries a high cost;  Agriculture is a viable source of investments for young people if it made attractive

Continues…  An “agriculture first” strategy – widely used in the 1970s would: Raise much needed foreign exchange currently used to import food that should be grown in Africa; Protect the continent from the vagaries of volatile food prices Raise incomes in rural areas Reduce poverty Raise demand to boost growth Provide more productive jobs for a significant share of Africa’s youth  Sustained and broad-based growth in Africa cannot take place without robust agricultural growth underpinning employment and incomes for the large majority of the employed population.

What would it take to raise output among small-holders?  Promote: The wider use of fertilizers; Sound water management techniques; Support to rural infrastructure and market access Agricultural research A swift transition from subsistence to commercialized farming Better packaging of farm and non-farm activities to make them really attractive  Ensure adequate rural education  Prioritize trade within Africa to raise exchanges between food surplus and deficit countries.

THE END Thank you!