ILO Sub-Regional Office for Southern Africa, Harare

The Labour Market and Decent Work Agenda in Southern Africa: Evidence and Challenges

The Decent Work Agenda seeks to promote employment and productive work, workers’ rights, social protection and social dialogue. This paper is a direct response to the challenges posed by the Agenda. Specifically, it examines the experiences of nine Southern Africa countries with emphasis on the aspects of employment and productive work. As expected, experiences in the region are varied. In particular, the paper notes a lack of comprehensive and up-to-date labour market information and makes recommendations about the indicators needed to fully understand and monitor progress on the Decent Work Agenda. Different countries have registered some limited success around decent work in, for example, the areas of minimum wages, public works programmes and social protection (to some degree, principally South Africa). On the other hand, the study found that the region still suffers from an enormous decent work deficit.