ILO Academy on the transition to the formal economy: Third edition

News | 23 November 2018
The 2018 edition of the Academy on the transition to the formal economy, which was held on 12-23 November at the International Training Centre of the ILO in Turin, Italy, was very successful bringing together almost 100 participants from all around the world (half from Africa, 25 per cent from Latin America and the rest from Asia and Europe). The diversity of profiles and the high level of expertise and experience of the participants provided solid ground for in-depth discussion and collective learning process.

Taking into account the new context marked by the adoption in 2015 of Recommendation No. 204 and the SDGs, especially SDG 8 (including indicator 8.3 related to the share of informal employment in total employment), and the growing number of countries formulating and implementing measures aiming at facilitating transition to formality, the Academy was designed this year to collectively discuss good practices and to better respond to the priority need of “Taking action”.

Opening session of the fourth edition of the Academy
The Academy offers a learning platform to review promising practices on the transition from the informal to the formal economy as well as to engage in constructive dialogue and debate on the future of informality. The event is an opportunity to LEARN about the most advanced thinking around concepts and methodologies for reducing informality, to EXCHANGE on existing practices, and to ADAPT lessons learnt to specific country contexts.

The Employment Policy Department of the ILO has always been a key partner of the Academy and this year many technical specialists contributed to its success: Frédéric Lapeyre participated in the opening session and two thematic sessions, while Vicky Leung and Maria Theresa Gutierrez addressed the issue of rural development/informality, Juan Chacaltana and Annamarie Kiaga the issue of innovations in drafting and implementing formalization policies, Federico Negro and Maha Kattaa the issue of fragility, conflicts and disasters/informality and Christine Hoffman the issue of skills development/informality.