Africa’s Evolving Employment Trends

By F. Yeboah, T. Jayne. The Transformation of Rural Africa, 2018

126 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Using nationally representative data from nine countries, we document demographic and employment trends in Africa’s workforce based on full-time labour equivalents (FTE). The FTE approach takes account of individuals’ multiple jobs throughout the year and is therefore likely to give more accurate estimates of the pace of structural transformation. Since 2000, Africa has experienced a sharp decline in the share of its labour force in farming. Because of the seasonal nature of farming, the share of the labour force remaining in farming is substantially lower using the FTE approach than when examined in terms of individuals’ primary sources of employment or total numbers of jobs. Using the FTE approach, the share of the labour force in farming ranges across the nine countries from 35 per cent in Ghana to 54 per cent in Rwanda. Employment in off-farm segments of agri-food systems is expanding rapidly in percentage terms, but in terms of absolute numbers, non-farm activities are by far the major source of employment outside of farming. Contrary to widespread perceptions, the mean age of adults engaged primarily in farming is not rising – in fact it is falling slightly in some countries and remains stable in most others. The pace at which the labour force is shifting out of agriculture is strongly and positively tied to the rate of lagged farm productivity growth. Given the unprecedented growth in the number of young Africans entering the labour market, an effective youth employment strategy in most African countries will rely on massive job expansion, which in turn will rely on the multiplier effects of agricultural productivity growth. Strategies that raise the returns to labour in farming therefore remain crucial for achieving rapid economic transformation and may constitute the core of effective youth employment strategies.

Subfields: General Health Professions, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a674bf0e0d0d7e40c132518dde6950e59707fffd

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Health Professions

1. Talip Kilic
2. G. V. Broeck

In Safety Research

1. Talip Kilic
2. G. V. Broeck
3. V. Manyong
4. T. Abdoulaye
5. T. Jayne
6. A. Alene

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Talip Kilic
2. G. V. Broeck
3. V. Manyong
4. Jordan Chamberlin
5. T. Abdoulaye
6. T. Jayne
7. A. Alene

Citations in the corpus

• Revisiting the Farm Size‐Productivity Relationship Based on a Relatively Wide Range of Farm Sizes: Evidence from Kenya (2019, unknown): “…future relationships between farm size and productivity in much of Sub-Saharan Africa where the opportunity cost of family labor may be rising in response to rising real per capita incomes and a declining share of the labor force engaged in farming (Barrett et al. 2017; Yeboah and Jayne 2018).”
• African Rural Youth Engagement in Agribusiness: Achievements, Limitations, and Lessons (2019, background): “Off-farm jobs in the agri-food systems occupy less than 10% of all the jobs held by the youth (15–25 years), while the majority of youth engage in farming [30].”
• Dynamics of off-farm employment in Sub-Saharan Africa: A gender perspective (2018, background): “Income from off-farm employment2 constitutes a significant share of the household livelihood portfolios across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) (Davis et al., 2017).”
• Africa’s Unfolding Economic Transformation (2018, background): “Africa’s labour force is diversifying away from subsistence farming (Yeboah & Jayne, 2018).”