Africa's Got Work to Do: Employment Prospects in the New Century

Estimates of the current and future structure of employment in sub-Saharan Africa (2005–20)are obtained based on household survey estimates for 28 countries and an elasticity-typemodel that relates employment to economic growth and demographic outcomes. Agriculturestill employs the majority of the labor force although workers are shifting slowly out of thesector. Sub-Saharan Africa's projected rapid labor force growth, combined with a lowbaseline level of private sector wage employment, means that even if sub-Saharan Africarealizes another decade of strong growth, the share of labor force employed in private firmsis not expected to rise substantially. Governments need to undertake measures to attractprivate enterprises that provide wage employment, but they also need to focus on improvingproductivity in the traditional and informal sectors as these will continue to absorb themajority of the labor force.