Job Creation, Core Labor Standards & Poverty Reduction in Africa: Capacity Building

Capacity building is a major priority throughout the project, including in the research and evaluation phases.  Three training components have been completed – a Global Development Network Workshop on Labor Markets in Dakar; a two-week face to face intensive World Bank Labor Market Policies Course at the World Bank in Washington; and a Distance Learning Course on Key Labor Market Issues in Africa, which was offered in 5 anglophone and 6 francophone African countries for two months.  Remaining capacity building activities include the following:

1. face-to-face course on labor standards and poverty reduction run by the ILO
2. targeted capacity building for social partners in PRSPs, also run by the ILO
3. intensive labor markets research training for graduate students administered by the World Bank.

 Labor Markets in Low Income Countries Workshop
Dakar, Senegal, January 23, 2005

 World Bank Labor Market Policies Course
Washington, DC February 28 – March 11, 2005

 Key Labor Market Issues in Africa - Distance learning course in 11 African countries
April 18 - May 26, 2005

This distance learning course was offered in five English-speaking (Ghana, Zambia, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Tanzania ) and six French-speaking countries (Burkina Faso, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Mauritania, Madagascar, and Benin).  There are a total of 256 participants (107 Anglophone and 149 Francophone).  The course took place twice a week (four-hour sessions each week) over eight weeks and was facilitated by local labor experts.  It incorporated videotaped presentations of experts from the World Bank and other institutions (including ILO), combined with at least one 2-hour session per week connected live with the other sites in Africa and resource people in Washington and Europe. Participants have also been actively discussing the presentations and background reading among themselves and with resource people on the e-discussion space that accompanied the course.  The research from component 1 of the TF project features prominently in the course.

Evaluations for the course were received and analyzed over the summer of 2005. The full results on are on the project website. Overall, 95% of Francophone respondents and 94% of Anglophone respondants found the course useful or very useful.

 Tripartite Regional Workshop on Core Labour standards and Job Creation in Africa

This in-depth training session organized and facilitated by the International Training Centre of the ILO (Turin) is planned to take place in Yaoundé, Cameroon from October 24-27, 2005.  Selected stakeholders, including workers, and employers representatives, as well as government officials, from five different sub-regions in Africa will participate in this course. The aim of this training session will be to give participants a greater understanding of the ILO’s fundamental conventions and its relevance to the creation of decent jobs and poverty reduction.

 Proposal (16kb pdf)
 Agenda (19kb pdf)

 Labor Market Graduate Training

A group of PhD-students from the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) will be selected to participate in an intensive labor market training. This training will be given by a team of German/European academics to be held in Nairobi. A research stay in an academic institution in Europe will be rewarded to 3-6 participants, followed by a selection of the best research-notes conducted throughout the course. The purpose of this initiative is to deepen knowledge and instruments, and establishing personal contacts between European and African research institutions.

The aim of this capacity building component is to help develop the research capacity of young African economists within the African context and concurrently to develop further the core themes of the Trust Fund project. The outcomes should strengthen or even create the capacity by locals to analyze labor market issues, including impact evaluation of labor market programs and policies, and to contribute to evidence-based policy input into the PRSP process.

The World Bank received Expressions of Interest from three organizations to administer this training program in collaboration with the African Economics Research Consortium.  All three (Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich; and the International Training Center of the ILO) have been asked to submit full proposals by December 7, 2005.  The program will include a two-week course on labor economics and policy for economics Ph.D students; supervised research and competition; and a short fellowship for winning researchers.

 Proposal (13kb pdf)

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