The recession bites in South Africa

 Tens of thousands of jobs in mining, metals and engineering are at risk in South Africa as firms cut costs due to the commodity rout. Trade union Solidarity says that as many as 58,549 workers in South Africa could lose their jobs this year across a number of industries. It said that more than 29,000 jobs could go in the mining sector, as well as 8,000 in the metal and engineering industry.

South Africa — which exports vast quantities of platinum, manganese and iron ore — has been hit hard by resource companies cutting costs in the face of declining profits. They've been hurt by sharp falls in commodity prices due to oversupply and slowing demand growth in top consumer China.

The Knock-On Effect From Ebola: Unemployment

Liberia’s Ebola outbreak has been over for a while, so what has happened to all those burial teams, contact tracers, Ebola Treatment Unit health workers, community mobilisers, ambulance drivers? What are they doing now?
The answer is not a lot. The majority of the estimated 20,000 or so workers and volunteers who risked their lives during the year-long fight are unable to find work, largely due to lingering stigma and fears about the virus.
Liberia was declared Ebola-free in May, but after almost 5,000 deaths and more than 10,000 cases, the country is still in trauma. Borders have reopened and trade is beginning to pick up, but the social and psychological scars take longer to heal.


“People are still afraid of us,” 44-year-old Morris Walker, who worked as a contact tracer, told IRIN.

“They don’t want to employ us because they feel we have some sort of disease and could infect them. But this is far from the fact.”
Before the outbreak, Walker had been working for many years as a waiter in a local restaurant. But when he tried to pick up again from where he’d left off, he was knocked back.
“The manager bluntly told me that my services were not needed because he heard that I was working with the burial teams,” Walker told IRIN. “The manager said that if he takes me back, most of his customers might not come back to the restaurant.” 
Walker has since applied for a number of jobs, but hasn’t had any luck. 
He is not alone.

There are no official figures, but several organisations, including local community service NGO Gratis, say that between 50 and 70 percent of former Ebola response workers are currently unemployed, particularly in and around hard-hit Margibi county. 

taken from here

Education? What's the use?

Africans with more education do not always see an employment benefit from their schooling. In fact, in most of the 29 countries Gallup surveyed in 2013, Africans with at least some secondary education fare only marginally better than Africans with a primary education in terms of a positive employment outcome (Gallup defines a positive employment outcome as working full time for an employer, working part time but not wanting full-time work or being self-employed by choice and not because they cannot find a job.)

Figures paint a dismal, inconsistent picture of the employment reward for continued education in Africa. This situation likely only further fuels the lack of incentive that often exists for Africans to continue their education. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, basic needs often compete with a family's ability to send their children to school. While primary education may be viewed as supporting certain occupational activities in rural and urban communities, it is likely that some families do not see the benefit of continued education. And, even if families do, the labor sacrifice makes enrollment beyond primary school infeasible. African families who continue sending their children to school likely do so because they believe it will lead to better jobs.

The results suggest the levels of unemployment and underemployment in most countries surveyed are similar regardless of Africans' educational attainment. This means a family may sacrifice for their child to get more education only to see their child unemployed or underemployed at the same level as someone who only obtained a primary education.

The disparity in educational attainment across sub-Saharan Africa further highlights the region's challenges in achieving universal education. Countries such as Niger and Burkina Faso have lower percentages of their populations achieving at least some secondary education (6% and 10% respectively) while South Africa and Zimbabwe have 73% and 74% of their population with at least some secondary education. Interestingly, while the levels of some secondary education and higher vary significantly between Zimbabwe and Niger, the positive employment outcome is nearly the same.

Developed countries often experience structural unemployment where the persistent mismatch of skills and available jobs requires job seekers to obtain additional education or vocational training. The levels of unemployment and underemployment seen throughout sub-Saharan Africa, however, suggest the mismatch may lie in the lack of opportunities available for those with more education. African employment opportunities must keep pace with growing levels of secondary and tertiary education achievement. Persistent structural unemployment that penalizes those with higher education creates the conditions for "brain drain" while also creating disincentives for continued education.

Sub-Saharan Africa's structural unemployment challenges illustrate the complexities of sustainable development. For instance, Nigeria's oil industry funds further investment in education but produces relatively few jobs. In other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, university curriculums prepare graduates for public, not private, sector employment. This focus ensures persistent skills mismatches while also potentially influencing the decisions of multinational corporations seeking to recruit locally. Education is an important component in addressing sub-Saharan Africa's challenges. However, if Africans do not see higher education leading to better employment opportunities, the region will continue to lose its brightest talents to countries with better economic opportunities. This might be one factor ultimately leading to the region having a diminished voice in determining its own future.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/180413/africans-not-reaping-job-benefits-education.aspx

The Morass in Mozambique

 Relative peace and stability since 1992 when the war ended, make Mozambique attractive to investors, and the economy has grown by more than 7 percent each year over the last 10 years, spurred by projects such as the MOZAL Aluminium plant near Maputo, and from mining by Brazilian company Vale in Tete province. Recent discoveries of huge quantities of natural gas continue to push growth upward. But the mineral and gas extraction projects create few jobs - just 3,800 in 2010, according to a 2014 report by Africa Economic Outlook. The few jobs that Mozambique's "megaprojects" create tend be highly qualified positions that are often taken by foreigners. The capital-intensive projects in Mozambique use heavy machinery to extract coal and gas and require little manpower. 

Mozambique's progress in reducing poverty and child mortality has stalled in recent years, and it remains one of the world's least developed countries, still greatly dependent on foreign aid, with about half the population living in poverty. A 2012 report by the Open Society Foundation estimated that 70 percent of people under age 35 in Mozambique - who form the majority of the 25 million population - cannot find stable employment. Today, the private sector creates just 18,000 jobs for 370,000 youth who enter the labour market yearly - a ratio of one job per 20 entrants.  Jobs in the Mozambique's public sector are highly sought after and a common complaint is that they are reserved only for those close to the ruling FRELIMO party, which has governed Mozambique since independence from Portugal in 1975.

"For many, the only way to get promoted is to join the ruling party," said Fernando Lima, a Mozambican analyst and CEO of independent media group Mediacoop 

According to Cremilde Domingo, a social worker at  Boane prison, the majority of young people she works  with commit crimes related to poverty and lack of  opportunity, such as burglary, robbery, and stealing  mobile phones. "We have natural resources but no jobs," she said.

Dying for a job

At least 16 people were killed in stampedes for government jobs in Nigeria when hundreds of thousands were invited to apply for fewer than 5,000 positions at the Immigration Service, officials and activists said Sunday.

Nigerians are desperate for work, with official statistics putting the number of unemployed at nearly 41 million of the 170 million population. Unemployment among young people aged under-24 is even higher — 38 percent according to official statistics and nearer 80 percent, according to the World Bank.

The Education Rights Campaign blamed inviting more applicants than centers could accommodate and not providing enough security. The campaign, which called for Moro to be fired, gave the example of Abuja National Stadium, which has a capacity for 60,000. It said 65,000 applicants were invited and seven people died. The other deaths took place in Minna, Port Harcourt, Dutse and Benin City.

Applicants said they each paid 1,000 naira (about $6) — apparently for the right to write tests on Saturday at the application centers. The Education Rights Campaign said it was scandalous that the government had collected about $3 million from applicants. It said it was unconscionable that the government was ‘‘preying on the misery of hapless Nigerian youths, especially graduates who suffer years without gainful employment.’’

nigerian poverty grows

About 70 percent of Nigeria’s 150 million people live below the poverty line, the Daily Trust reported, citing Lamido Sanusi, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria. The figure rose from 54 percent previously.

"There is little reason to believe that this wider diversion can be narrowed without much intensive effort." he said.

It is estimated that 12 million out of the 150 million Nigerians are unemployed. 49.9 percent of youth within the age of 15 and 24 years residing in the urban areas have no job while 39.6 percent of their counterparts in rural areas are also not employed. Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics put the number of unemployed women in the urban areas at 22 per cent and those in the rural areas at 24 per cent.

swaziland outlook bleak

The Swazi government recently conceded that unemployment was running at 40 percent, despite doggedly maintaining for many years that it was 26 percent, but economists expect this to rise, pushing up already high poverty levels - about two-thirds of Swazis live in chronic poverty.

Government has announced a reduction of 7,000 public service jobs in 2011 but the impact will have a ripple effect throughout the economy. According to the government's Central Statistics Office, one employed person supports, on average, 10 others.

Swaziland has the world's highest HIV prevalence rate - 26.1 percent – so one in four Swazis between the ages of 15 and 49 is living with the virus, and about half of those infected, or 110 000, are on antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, which can prolong a person’s life. The budget for HIV/AIDS would be cut by 10 percent in 2011.

Subsistence farmers on communal Swazi Nation Land, where about 80 percent of the country's one million population reside, use government tractors for ploughing, but government fuel depots have run dry and the machines are standing idle."This is planting season. It is December now, and for six weeks we have not been able to get seeds in the ground," farmer in the central Manzini region, told IRIN.

However, government spending on non-essential programmes has not been cut. A recent request by the finance minister for an additional $50 million towards the building of an international airport was approved by parliament and the airport's final cost is expected to be in the region of $1 billion. Cabinet officials have also awarded themselves substantial pay rises, and have extended retirement benefits to former government officials.

"..as more business shut and public sector workers are laid off, it is inevitable that more people will join the ranks of the poor." Amos Ndwandwe, an economist at a bank in the capital, Mbabane, explained

casualisation in Kenya

Millions of Kenyan youths joined the ranks of the working poor in the past five years as employers turned to temporary or contractual jobs to cut costs – stalling the social progress that usually comes with employment. Since the country embarked on economic liberalisation in the early 1990s data shows that deregulation deepened in the past five years resulting in a steep rise in the number of part-time, contract, and out-sourced workers.

Temporary employment, which comes without key benefits such as pension, health insurance or access to loan facilities, has left the majority of young people either underemployed or underpaid locking them up in the bottom quarter of the social pyramid, according to the Institute of Economic Affairs, a Nairobi-based think tank.

The proportion of casual workers in the formal sector of the economy increase gradually from 17.9 per cent in 2000 to 32.2 per cent last year. underemployed or poorly paid employees often become incapable of starting families, providing their children with good healthcare or educating their off-spring.

“The danger is that unemployment or underemployment is extending the burden of dependency on parents, diminishing self-esteem fuelling frustrations and making crime an attractive option,” said Mr Githongo.
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