Addis Ababa, April 30 and May 1, 2007

Ms. Aida, Opoku-Mensah, Director, ISTD/ECA
Mr. Brahima Sanou, ITU Regional Representative for Africa;
Honoured Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a pleasure for me to represent the ILO at this very important experts’ review workshop on ICTs and Employment. We at the ILO are glad to partner with the ECA and the ITU in this endeavour. We see this as the implementation of the “One UN”, which all UN agencies are being encouraged to adhere to.

As you are all aware, the high incidence of poverty in Africa is the primary development challenge facing the continent. The failure of economic growth to reduce the incidence of poverty in general and the number of working poor in particular, suggests the need to critically re-examine the links between growth, employment and poverty reduction.

We do recognize the potential of the ICT sector in creating full, productive and decent jobs for all in Africa, and to chart out how the ICTs can strengthen these links to foster growth and job creation.

The IT sector has been among the most dynamic and innovative in the globalized economy, creating millions of jobs and wealth worldwide but, at the same time, favouring wide inequalities.

Little progress has been made in shifting African economies away from low productivity agriculture and resource extraction towards manufacturing and other more dynamic and knowledge-intensive activities in the service sector. The agricultural sector remains the largest employer in Africa, taking up close to 70 per cent of total employment in sub-Saharan Africa in 2005.

According to the World Employment Report 2004-05 Sub-Saharan Africa was the only region where between 1993 and 2003 labour productivity actually decreased. Yet without increases in productivity, there is no guarantee of decent work. The reduced productivity resulted in an increase in the productive employment generation and decent work deficit has simply exacerbated the incidence and conditions of the working poor.

The latest edition of the Economic Report on Africa (ERA 2007), the annual flagship publication of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), which was launched about three weeks ago, titled “Accelerating Africa's Development through Diversification,” notes that African economies continued to sustain the growth momentum of previous years, recording an overall real GDP growth rate of 5.7 per cent in 2006. 28 countries recorded higher economic growth rates in 2006 than 2005. Moreover African economies are forecast to grow by an average of 5.8 per cent in 2007.

All in all, Africa is fully on track – with impressive economic growth figures, and political commitments at the highest level to tackle poverty and unemployment! However, as we meet here, we need to ask ourselves a series of questions.

§ Why, in spite of the above performance are we not registering meaningful progress in bringing down poverty and unemployment?

§ Why is it that, despite this impressive economic performance, are we not seeing any significant dent in unemployment and underemployment?

§ Why is the total population living below the US$1 a day threshold higher today than in the last two decades?

These are tough questions we must address. As you are aware, September this year will mark the mid-point to the MDGs target date of 2015. The central task therefore is that this continent must scale up all interventions in order to meet the MDGs. And it must do so now, drawing on both internal and external resources.

And investing in decent work for all is central to the attainment of MDGs.

Linking new and higher skills with advanced technologies lies at the heart of the potential for improving productivity of workers and firms. Transfer of technologies will benefit Africa only if competent professionals, technicians and skilled workers are available. A good example is information and communications technology, where reducing the digital and technological divide is critical for development since timely access to information and technologies and skills can promote trade, education, employment, health and wealth. Africa requires the development of core skills such as problem solving, abstract thinking, working in teams, and communication, which are as important for productivity and employability as technical skills.

At the just concluded African Regional Meeting of the ILO, we recognized the shortage of skills that is holding back development. “This is particularly the case in the new information and communications technologies where a major drive to bridge the digital divide within countries and between Africa and other countries is essential”, notes the conclusions.

We are witnessing a “brain drain” of skilled labour from our continent, particularly in the ICT sub sector.

It is estimated that more than 20 million Africans live outside their countries of birth or citizenship, most in other African countries, but also in large numbers in Europe. While low or semiskilled non-professional occupations predominate, there are also significant numbers of skilled workers and professionals among the migrant Africans.

In the face of enormous deficits in human capital, low investments in basic education and rising mortality rates among the working-age population due to HIV/AIDS, such human resource losses due to migration represent a severe obstacle to economic and social development.

In order to ensure that migration benefits development, efforts are necessary to minimize or compensate for brain drain, enhance skills and knowledge acquisition opportunities for migrants, facilitate enterprise creation by migrants, obtain safe and inexpensive channels for remittances, promote productive and employment producing investments of remittances, and mobilize diasporas abroad for home country development.

Since much migration in and from Africa reflects decent work deficits, wider efforts must be targeted at employment creation, job intensive capital investment, and fair trade rules in the international system that support agricultural and industrial production in the region. Already our Heads of State and Government pledged to do so in Ouagadougou when they decided to “employment creation as an explicit and central objective of our economic and social policies at national, regional and continental levels, for sustainable poverty alleviation and with a view to improving the living conditions of our people”.

On our part, the ILO will continue to expand its efforts in the framework of Decent Work Country Programmes to improve working conditions in the sector by making use of social dialogue and fostering respect of the Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy and the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its Follow-Up, 1998.

The ILO will further investigate industry-specific occupational safety and health risks and continue to promote occupational health and safety standards relevant to the IT sector.

The ILO will continue to provide technical assistance to member States in regard to labour inspection, so that they can improve effectiveness and efficiency and make use of specific labour inspection training tools or other ILO guidance relevant to the sector.

The extent to which workers’ voices are heard in the decision-making process on change is very crucial for the sustainability of the ICT sector in Africa.

Governments have particular roles to play in the social dialogue process, notably to help establish legal and/or institutional frameworks for social dialogue, act as moderator and/or guarantor of agreements concluded between the social partners and assist in provision of compensatory training and welfare adjustments for enterprises and workers affected by change.

Moreover this Meeting needs to recognize the importance of occupational safety and health standards and the need for them to be implemented to mitigate risks and create safe workplaces, throughout the sector. Lifelong learning is also fundamental to continuously update training to deal with occupational safety and health risks and nurture a preventative safety culture.

Skills development policies and curricula and training programmes need to be developed.

Before I conclude my opening remarks, let me reiterate that ICTs offer wide opportunities by expanding market access through participation in supply chains. This requires competitive enterprises, and ICTs are a fundamental contributor to such competitiveness. However, ICTs also amplify existing social divides by favouring skilled labour. To fulfil the potential of ICTs efforts must be deployed to increase access to ICTs, to promote both enterprise and human resource development and to promote social dialogue. Indeed, ICTs result in structural change and such changes can be best achieved through consensus building and tripartite social dialogue.

Finally, let me once again thank the ECA and the ITU for agreeing to partner with us in this exercise.

I thank you for your kind attention.