How to improve labour market information in Africa

Senior experts from the African Union Commission, ILO, Regional Economic Communities and national statistical institutions gathered in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire to examine labour market information and informal economy in Africa.

Press release | 24 August 2015
ADDIS ABABA (ILO News) – The African Union Technical Work Group on Labour Market Information and Informal Economy, which includes ILO’s expertise, is meeting in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire from 25-27 August, 2015 to discuss how to develop and harmonize a sound statistics system for the continent.

The main objective of this annual meeting is to explore a new policy development in the areas of labour, employment, productivity, labour migration, social protection and informal economy and make recommendations to the Committee of Directors-General of National Statistical Offices (CoDGs) which is expected to meet in November 2015 in Libreville, Gabon.

With the constant need for accurate and up to date statistics, African Members States have been requested to develop regional and country roadmap for the implementation of a Labour Market Information System Harmonization and Coordination Framework (LMIS-HCF).

“The meeting will also consider the new ILO Framework on labour and employment statistics”, underlined Yacouba Diallo, Senior Statistician, at the ILO Regional Office for Africa.

Technical experts from Department of Statistics of the African Union, the International Labour Organization (ILO), AFRISTAT, the UN Economic Commission for Africa; national statisticians from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe as well as specialists from African Regional Economic Communities (RECS) and regional social partners institutions are now working on designing measurement systems for the informal economy, productivity and competitiveness, as well as migration data and statistics.
Background

The Technical Working Group on the Labour Market Information System and Informal Economy is a sectoral structure of the AU Statistic Plan of Action aiming at implementing the African Charter on Statistics and the Strategy for the Harmonisation of Statistic sin Africa (SHaSA). 

 
In 2011, the AU adopted the Programme of Upgrading the Informal Economy in 2011 and the Social Protection Plan for the Informal Economy and Rural Workers (SPIREWORK) while the ILO plans to adopt in June 2015 a Recommendation on Transitioning form the Informal Economy to the Formal Economy. An appropriate monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of these policies require robust systems of data and indicators which the TWG needs to carry out.

For more information, please contact the Regional Office for Africa - guebray@ilo.org