AYC Participated in the 6th IOE Social Partners Summit in Lagos, Nigeria

17

Mar

By: AYC

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For more about the Summit including the outcome document, please visit the IOE website at this link: IOE 6th ASP Summit 2020, Lagos, Nigeria.

Mr. Flomo M. Maiwo, Deputy Executive Chairperson and Mr. Kawsu Sillah, Executive Secretary attended the Summit representing the AYC.

Held from 25^th – 26^th February 2020 in Lagos, Nigeria, the 6^th African Social Partners Summit was convened by the International Organisation of Employers (IOE) in partnership with Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA) and International Labour Organisation (ILO) with support of the European Union under the theme: ‘’Towards the socio-economic transformation of Africa through job creation: the role of the social partners’’. It brought together all the interested parties – representatives of employers, workers, governments, international organisations, and youth – to share and review work to date to advance job creation policies in Africa. The ASP Summit series has been a journey: we have moved from words to actions and now is the time to explore and assess the challenges and opportunities arising from implementation. The aim was to identify initiatives that have real potential for replication, albeit modified for national particularities, in the achievement of economic and social transformation through skills development and job creation.

Addressing the participants in his opening remark, Mr. Taiwo Adeniyi, President and Chairman of Governing Council (NECA) noted that to address the challenges of rising of unemployment requires concerted efforts and encouraged partners to put their ideas and resources together to curb this global threat to our development. He shared some initiatives taken by his organisation such as the ‘’Industrial Training Fund’’ which is supporting young people to gain skills needed to secure employment or create jobs and the organisation of annual ‘’Job Fair’’ which serves as a platform for job seekers and employers to meet and since over 2600 job seekers participated in the fair.

For his part, Mr. Robert Suarez Santos, Secretary General of IOE, expressed delightto be in Lagos for this important Summit alongside employers and other stakeholders in the industry. He thanked the participants for accepting the invitation to attend the 6^th Social Partners Summit. Mr. Suarez noted that Nigeria has big opportunities in terms of economic growth and youth bulge and that’s one of the reasons for IOE to host this Summit in Lagos with a view to identify areas for global and regional actions to create decent jobs (in partnership with Business Africa and other stakeholders in the Africa region). ‘’Creating a business environment for job creation and skills development is central in IOE’s work’’, SG Santos said. At IOE, we are working hard with ILO to allocate more resources for skills development and job creation and the outcome of this Summit will help us to realize this goal. He concluded by assuring the IOE’s continued support and collaboration with African partners.

Mrs. Jacqueline Mugo, Secretary General, Business Africa, thanked the IOE and NECA for organising the Summit and she hoped the gathering will come up with tangible solutions to provide high quality paying jobs for African youth. Mrs. Mugo emphasized that creating inclusive and sustainable jobs is central to the development of African economy, and enterprises need to growth and dialogue among themselves to improve partnership and job creation in Africa. She encouraged the partners to take advantages of AFCFTA to ease free movement of people, goods and services, and improve engagement around youth to better skills development. Jacqueline concluded by reminding the Nigerian authorities the need to remove visa barriers for all African citizens to make business engagement easier.

Ms. Cynthia Samuel Olonjuwon, Assistant Director General and Regional Director for Africa at ILO, begin her remark by appreciating the IOE and NECA for inviting her to the Summit. Madam Cynthia revealed that NECA played a great role in her personal career development as she previously served the association in various capacities before moving to her current position at ILO. She thanked the management for all the support accorded to her over the years.

In her address, the ILO regional director said, 6 out of 10 fastest growing economies are in Africa, and despite this Africa continue to face the challenges of high unemployment. She noted that unemployment rate will increase from 34.1M to 38.4M, and youth not in education and training will increase from 52.2M to 58.3M in the coming years. Given this statistics, madam Cynthia asked ‘’can we change the Demographic profile into a dividend or a disaster?’’.

‘’Political space must allowed job creation and not only mere talks, we to move from low paying to formal high paying jobs’’, she emphasized. She noted that Agriculture remains major employers for many African countries but yet it’s not mechanized in such a way that young people will be motivated to venture into it.

According to her, ILO has adopted a Plan of Action covering 7 work streaming, and promoting decent work for young African men and women is very central in this. She concluded by expressing the ILO’s commitment to Silencing the Guns in Africa by 2020.

Mr. Ayuba P. Wabba, President of International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), informed the gathering that in 2019, about 40M jobs were created but only 16M jobs grasp by young people. ‘’Africa need plenty jobs to grow its economy’’, Mr. Ayuba said.

Finally, Senator (Dr.) Chris Nwabueze Ngige, Hon. Minister of Labour and Employment delivered the key note and opening statement. ‘’Nigerian Government is concerned with an alarming rate of unemployment and working with stakeholders to addressing it’’, Hon. Minister said.

He noted that the youth population is challenge in working poverty, mismatch of skills and quality education and to address this challenge, the Federal Government of Nigeria has introduced a minimum wage (30 thousand naira as a minimum wage in Nigeria), digital skills (IT) training programmes for youth and micro economic framework to create employment throughout the country. He thanked IOE and NECA for organizing the Summit in Nigeria, thanked participants for attending and officially declares the Summit open.

Panel discussions (Outcome of the ILO Africa Regional Meeting and employer-related activities)

Panelists include:

El-Mahfoudh Megateli, IOE Regional Vice President for Africa
Jacqueline Mugo, SG, Business Africa

Key highlights

Implementation of the outcome is key
Global market change is growing but only 20% of supply change is growing
Inter-regional trade is much low in Africa
Right policy need to be put in place
Capacity building and access to technology should be prioritized
Limited data

The AYC was given the opportunity to make an intervention and co-moderate the session on ‘’Work-based learning in Africa: how can we further expand TVET to develop skills for the labour market?’’

During the discussions, the AYC shared its experiences on how it is empowering African youth to gain essential skills in order to become self-employed or relevant in labour market. The representative raised the following questions:

How can young people get further involved in TVET? Is there any role, youth networks like the AYC can play to get young people interested in TVET, and make it affordable for everyone? TVET is very expensive? Not getting involved in TVET is even more expensive as more boku haram, migration activities etc will continue to take place.

Key recommendations

Youth leaders can inspire peers to get involve in TVET.
Training for youth organisations in TVET. Young people identified themselves in TVET sector.
Career path, mentorship, sensitization in high school and social medial, inter-generational collaboration should be conducted.
TVET play a key role in reducing internal and cross boarder migration and provides solutions to job creation for youth in Africa

What is the role of workers’ organisations?

Government and private sector alike must develop workforce development and training programs for self-employment)
Build the capacities of youth organisations/networks to mobilise, communicate and influence TVET policy and strategies
Develop Policy on TVET/STEM to encourage youth to go into TVET field

How can private sector get more involved in promotion of TVET?

Develop and implement apprenticeship training program, advocate for reforms in private sector, training institutions and governments to directly target youth and to promote TVET .

State of TVET learning in Africa

Key highlights

Perception around TVET (stigmatization): Across the Africa region, only 6% enrollment in TVET);
Increasing youth bulge: 11 million African youth entering job market every year for the next two decade;
40M young people are projected to drop out of school in the next decade;
Skills the new currency.

Soft skills vs Hard soft

Communication skills
People management skills
Strategy skills
Analysis and problem solving skills
‘’Glocal’’ skills
Finance
Skills Governance (review of TVET and apprenticeship programs)

Young farmer

Not able to turn their ideas into a reality
In Morocco observatory of employers association

Key recommendations

Promote made in Africa
What can we give to the youth?
Too much of meeting should be reduced
Build good relationship with Government and other development partners
Introduction and adoption of AIs,
TVET should be more of hands on and less theory

In the end, participants were divided into groups to identify sub-regional challenges and share best practices.

Regional Breakouts (Best practices from Nigeria)

Federal Government provides funding support to private sector actors to implement different job creation initiatives such as the ‘’YouWin’’ – The Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria;
Implemented business plan competition through which 3,900 beneficiaries (young men and women) participated in the competition;
Provided mentorship and other business advisory services to young entrepreneurs and business managers;
Provided access to finance for MSMEs including women and youth (84.1 Billion Naira) was disbursed by the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN). About 81,222 MSMEs benefited across the 6 geo-political zones.

Challenges

Increasing youthful population and emerging businesses;
Limited investment/funding opportunities;
Capacity of the Government and funding institutions to meet expectations of the growing population.

Recommendations from the sub-regional breakouts were presented to the organisers and will form part of the outcomes of Summit.

-End-

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