Advancing social justice, promoting decent work
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Regional Research Brief
Lifelong learning and skills for the future: Insights for Africa
This regional brief explores how lifelong learning and skills development can support resilience, inclusion and decent work in Africa. Drawing on new data and analysis, it highlights access gaps, shifting skills demand and priorities for building effective learning systems.
Lifelong learning and skills development are key policy priorities for Africa, fostering resilience, innovation, decent work and inclusion in the context of structural transformations and persistent labour market challenges.
Yet participation in quality learning that leads to recognized skills and qualifications remains limited and unequal. Evidence from the United Republic of Tanzania highlights strong disparities in workers’ access to such learning, shaped by formality status, educational attainment and literacy. This evidence is generated through a new, publicly available ILO survey tool capturing lifelong learning in the world of work.
The green and digital transitions are reshaping skills demand in African labour markets and reinforce the importance of lifelong learning systems that can support adaptation and fair access to new opportunities.
Against the backdrop of these transformations, skills analysis using online vacancy data from Egypt and South Africa shows that employers demand rounded skills profiles, with technical skills often required alongside foundational socio-emotional and cognitive skills.
Lifelong learning must be treated as a cohesive system, requiring coordinated governance, adequate financing, flexible and inclusive learning pathways, quality assurance, data analysis, and accessible career guidance and outreach.
Evidence from the ILO institutional survey (including Cabo Verde, Congo, Madagascar, Morocco, the United Republic of Tanzania, Senegal, and South Africa) suggests that ambitious goals for lifelong learning systems are still out of reach for many countries. Yet there are also opportunities and examples of good practice across the region.
