High fertility and declining mortality rates have led to a very young population in most Sub-Saharan African countries. The region’s labor force is expected to increase by 11 million people per year ...over the next 10 years. Most of this increase will be new entrants seeking their first job. While the younger generation is better educated than their parents, they often lack the means to translate that education into productive employment. Today, most work is in nonwage jobs on farms and in household enterprises. Even if greater economic activity were to create the conditions for robust growth and economic transformation, the private modern wage sector in low- and lower-middle-income countries could not absorb all the applicants. This report focuses on how to improve the quality of all jobs and to meet the aspirations of youth. It emphasizes that building a strong foundation for human capital development can play an important role in boosting earnings, and it argues that a balanced approach focused on building skills, raising productivity, and increasing the demand for labor is necessary. Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa notes that many youth employment challenges are problems of employment in general. However, youth is a time of transition, and young people face particular constraints to accessing productive work. The report brings together original analysis of household and labor force surveys; it reviews the experience of a number of promising interventions across the continent; it draws from qualitative studies in several countries; and it surveys the most up-to-date evidence from rigorous evaluations of policies and programs. From this information base, the report provides guidance to policy makers on how to intervene along two dimensions―human capital and the business environment―and in three priority areas―agriculture, household enterprises, and the modern wage sector. The ultimate goals are to increase productivity, improve livelihoods, and multiply opportunities for young people.
This article presents findings regarding collective organisation among online freelancers in middle‐income countries. Drawing on research in Southeast Asia and Sub‐Saharan Africa, we find that the ...specific nature of the online freelancing labour process gives rise to a distinctive form of organisation, in which social media groups play a central role in structuring communication and unions are absent. Previous research is limited to either conventional freelancers or ‘microworkers’ who do relatively low‐skilled tasks via online labour platforms. This study uses 107 interviews and a survey of 658 freelancers who obtain work via a variety of online platforms to highlight that Internet‐based communities play a vital role in their work experiences. Internet‐based communities enable workers to support each other and share information. This, in turn, increases their security and protection. However, these communities are fragmented by nationality, occupation and platform.
Africa is beginning to capture the imagination of entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and scholars as an emerging market of new growth opportunities. Over 15 years, the continent has experienced an ...average growth rate of 5%. Out of its 54 countries, 26 have achieved middle-income status, while the proportion of those living in extreme poverty has fallen from 51% in 2005 to 42% in 2014. Although there are regional differences, the primary drivers of growth have been rapidly emerging consumer markets, regional economic integration, investment in infrastructure, technological leap-frogging, and the opening up of new markets, especially in the service sector. Africa offers great potential as a context for management research, and more empirical and conceptual work is warranted to explain the richness of the opportunities on the African continent and address the challenges within them. There is a great deal more to learn from Africa than social development. Management scholars have the opportunity to provide empirical evidence and guide business executives and policy makers alike on the road ahead.
•Ninety percent of Africa’s surplus arable land is concentrated in a few countries.•Africa’s rural populations are highly clustered in relatively densely populated areas.•Median farm size is ...generally declining and land ownership concentration is rising.•Unsustainable forms of land intensification apparent in high-density farming areas.•Land access will be important for absorbing youth into gainful employment.
Evidence assembled in this special issue of Food Policy shows that rising rural population densities in parts of Africa are profoundly affecting farming systems and the region’s economies in ways that are underappreciated in current discourse on African development issues. This study synthesizes how people, markets and governments are responding to rising land pressures in Africa, drawing on key findings from the various contributions in this special issue. The papers herein revisit the issue of Boserupian agricultural intensification as an important response to land constraints, but they also go further than Boserup and her followers to explore broader responses to land constraints, including non-farm diversification, migration, and reduced fertility rates. Agricultural and rural development strategies in the region will need to more fully anticipate the implications of Africa’s rapidly changing land and demographic situation, and the immense challenges that mounting land pressures pose in the context of current evidence of unsustainable agricultural intensification, a rapidly rising labor force associated with the region’s current demographic conditions, and limited nonfarm job creation. These challenges are manageable but will require explicit policy actions to address the unique development challenges in densely populated rural areas.
Concurrent extreme events, i.e. multi-variate extremes, can be associated with strong impacts. Hence, an understanding of how such events are changing in a warming climate is helpful to avoid some ...associated climate change impacts and better prepare for them. In this article, we analyse the projected occurrence of hot, dry, and wet extreme events' clusters in the multi-model ensemble of the 6th phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). Changes in 'extreme extremes', i.e. events with only 1% probability of occurrence in the current climate are analysed, first as univariate extremes, and then when co-occurring with other types of extremes (i.e. events clusters) within the same week, month or year. The projections are analysed for present-day climate (+1 °C) and different levels of additional global warming (+1.5 °C, +2 °C, +3 °C). The results reveal substantial risk of occurrence of extreme events' clusters of different types across the globe at higher global warming levels. Hotspot regions for hot and dry clusters are mainly found in Brazil, i.e. in the Northeast and the Amazon rain forest, the Mediterranean region, and Southern Africa. Hotspot regions for wet and hot clusters are found in tropical Africa but also in the Sahel region, Indonesia, and in mountainous regions such as the Andes and the Himalaya.
This book engages in the debate on growth versus economic transformation and the importance of industrial policy, presenting a comprehensive framework for explaining the politics of industrial ...policy. Using comparative research to theorize about the politics of industrial policy in countries in the early stages of capitalist transformation that also experience the pressures of elections due to democratization, this book provides four in-depth African country studies that illustrate the challenges to economic transformation and the politics of implementing industrial policies.
In sub-Saharan Africa, 160 million grid-connected electricity consumers live in countries where hydropower accounts for over 50% of total power supply. A warmer climate with more frequent and intense ...extremes could result in supply reliability issues. Here, (i) a robust framework to highlight the interdependencies between hydropower, water availability, and climate change is proposed, (ii) the state-of-the art literature on the projected impacts of climate change on hydropower in sub-Saharan Africa is reviewed, and (iii) supporting evidence on past trends and current pathways of power mix diversification, drought incidence, and climate change projections is provided. We find that only few countries have pursued a diversification strategy away from hydropower over the last three decades, while others' expansion plans will reinforce the dependency. This will occur irrespective of the fact that some of the largest river basins have experienced a significant drying during the last century. Agreement is found on likely positive impacts of climate change on East Africa's hydropower potential, negative impacts in West and Southern Africa, and substantial uncertainty in Central Africa. Irrespective of the absolute change in gross technical potential, more frequent and intense extremes are projected. One possible paradigm to increase resilience and fulfil the pledges of the Paris Agreement is a synergetic planning and management of hydropower and variable renewables.
•Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa largely rely on hydropower for power supply.•Climate change can affect supply reliability and security in multiple ways.•Diversification has hitherto only been promoted in a limited number of countries.•Several major river basins have been drying throughout the twentieth century.•Integrating variable renewables and hydropower can increase resilience.
This is a story about a house with a history and about the people who lived or worked there. It captures something of the spirit of the times in the worlds of politics and development, and it ...discusses the links which were established between Oxfam GB in Zambia and the African National Congress of South Africa.
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