The STRENGTHEN2 project team visited Windhoek, Namibia, in April 2023 to reinforce the capacity for conducting employment impact assessments of national stakeholders and international partners, and to raise awareness on the work of the ILO and the European Union in the country.

The national stakeholders included amongst others: the Ministry of Employment Creation and Labour Relations, the National Statistics Office of Namibia, the Bank of Namibia, the National Planning Commission, the Ministry of Finance, Namibia-based universities, and workers’ and employers’ organizations. The international partners included the EU delegation in Namibia and international financing partner institutions of EU-funded investment projects.

Through an introductory seminar, the ILO team demonstrated the importance of employment impact assessment and how it is carried out in the context of the STRENGTHEN2 project as well as other country level initiatives led by the ILO. This seminar was then followed by a technical training, where ILO taught how to use economy-wide models to conduct impact assessment, enabling to answer questions such as: “How many and what kinds of jobs can be created by policies and investment operations? In which sector are these jobs created? What are the impacts on selected SDG indicators?”

The training programme was highly appreciated and established a good basis for future seminars in Namibia, particularly on Employment Impact Assessments. Furthermore, an important achievement of the mission was agreeing further joint activities with some of the stakeholders present in the training.