Project background

STRENGTHEN2, hosted in the DEVINVEST branch of the ILO’s Employment Policy Department,is a joint initiative of the European Union and the ILO that focuses on job creation through investments. Launched in August 2020, the project is a strategic partnership with the overall goal of leveraging employment impact assessments to promote the creation of more and better jobs in sub-Saharan African countries.

A particular area of attention will be on European Union (EU)-sponsored actions, more specifically, the EU’s External Investment Plan which aims, among others, to ensure an integrated approach to boosting investment climate and business environment in order to promote decent job creation and inclusive and sustainable development in Africa. Given the high levels of poverty in the region, rising inequalities in many countries, growing population in sub-Saharan Africa and high levels of inequality, unemployment and underemployment, in particular among young people and women, more and better jobs are an absolute necessity.

STRENGTHEN2 is scheduled to end in July 2024 and builds on earlier ILO work, more concretely, efforts undertaken as part of the now concluded first STRENGTHENproject. The project collaborates closely with the Mainstreaming Employment into Trade and Investment in the Southern Neighbourhood project, or METI,which covers related issues for countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Read more