Wanted: jobs for Africa’s youth - Diversification
Wanted: jobs for Africa’s youth - Diversification
By Gumisai Mutume
The Youth Employment Network, an alliance of countries initiated by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in collaboration with the heads of the ILO and World Bank, recommends that governments diversify their economies and promote sectors that use a lot of workers. Many African economies still rely on the production of one or two primary commodities. They could diversify into processing these commodities or producing light manufactures, as Mauritius has successfully done.
Over two decades, Mauritius has averaged 6 per cent annual economic growth, resulting in a fourfold increase in per capita income and virtually eliminating unemployment. The government attracted investors to the country’s principal exports, sugar and garments. It also furthered diversification by promoting export processing zones (EPZs), which featured incentives for investors but also allowed workers to form and join unions (unlike in the EPZs of some other countries).
Between 1983 and 1986, employment in Mauritius’s EPZs tripled and by 1985 the EPZ sector had overtaken sugar as the prime source of exports, foreign exchange earnings and employment. Today Mauritius is no longer able to compete so effectively with other textile producers, such as China. So it is restructuring its economy, moving into other sectors such as financial services, light engineering goods, precision plastics and computer products.
Wanted jobs for Africas youth Diversification - To learn more about this author, visit Africa Renewal's Website.
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From Africa Renewal, Vol.20 #3 (October 2006), page 6
By Gumisai Mutume
The Youth Employment Network, an alliance of countries initiated by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in collaboration with the heads of the ILO and World Bank, recommends that governments diversify their economies and promote sectors that use a lot of workers. Many African economies still rely on the production of one or two primary commodities. They could diversify into processing these commodities or producing light manufactures, as Mauritius has successfully done.
Over two decades, Mauritius has averaged 6 per cent annual economic growth, resulting in a fourfold increase in per capita income and virtually eliminating unemployment. The government attracted investors to the country’s principal exports, sugar and garments. It also furthered diversification by promoting export processing zones (EPZs), which featured incentives for investors but also allowed workers to form and join unions (unlike in the EPZs of some other countries).
Between 1983 and 1986, employment in Mauritius’s EPZs tripled and by 1985 the EPZ sector had overtaken sugar as the prime source of exports, foreign exchange earnings and employment. Today Mauritius is no longer able to compete so effectively with other textile producers, such as China. So it is restructuring its economy, moving into other sectors such as financial services, light engineering goods, precision plastics and computer products.
Wanted jobs for Africas youth Diversification - To learn more about this author, visit Africa Renewal's Website.
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