Own Correspondent|The ILO’s 14th Africa Regional Meeting has adopted a new declaration calling for investment in decent job creation, the institutions of work and sustainable growth in order to achieve a human-centred future of work in Africa.
The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) 14th Africa Regional Meeting adopted the landmark declaration calling for concrete actions on four areas critical to employers.
These actions cover creating an enabling environment for sustainable business, practical measures to enhance productivity growth, comprehensive policy guidance and technical support for skills development, and comprehensive measures for removing policy and regulatory barriers to formalisation.
“This Declaration is a milestone for the Employers. The comprehensive list of actions covering our concerns is an extraordinary outcome for us. This was a group effort with excellent support from our entire Employers delegation. It is another confirmation on how united the Employers are in pursuing our agenda at the ILO,” explained IOE Secretary-General Roberto Suárez Santos.
Prior to the conference, Informal sector participants pleaded with the continent’s leaders to include them in decision making.
Some of the participants at the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) 14th Regional Conference, held in Abidjan, Ivory Coast recently, complained of being side-lined in policymaking institutions.
Nine out of 10 working people on the continent are employed in the informal sector.
Lorraine Sibanda, of Zimbabwe, who is the Streetnet International President – an informal sector organisation did not mince her words when explaining to the continent’s leaders that they were getting a lot wrong when dealing with the sector.
“There is a need to harness the innovation that these workers have, including their knowledge and skills. What they lack is a conducive policy environment and the conducive physical environment to really bring out their best,” Sibanda said.
Madagascar’s Prime Minister Christian Ntsay explained that the informal sector was often wrongly associated with undesirable and illegal practices. He said economic and financial policies in support of the sector should instead take centre stage in the debate.
South Africa’s informal sector provided employment and income for over 2.5 million workers and business owners, giving jobs to one in every six employed South Africans.