European Parliament study calls for stronger decent work metrics in EU interventions in sub-Saharan Africa

BRUSSELS (ILO News) – A study commissioned by the European Parliament’s Committee on Development finds that the European Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB) have made progress in measuring the employment effects of EU external action programmes and investments in sub-Saharan Africa but also identifies significant gaps. It recommends that they make better use of existing tools, including those of ILO, and strengthen decent work as a cross-cutting concern in Global Gateway operations.

Prepared in consultation with the ILO, the study assesses how the Directorate-General for International Partnerships of the European Commission and the EIB measure and report the impact of their external-action programmes and investments on decent and sustainable job creation in sub-Saharan Africa. The focus is on the Global Gateway, the EU’s principal external investment strategy, which aims to increase investments to boost regional and continental economic integration, whilst upholding the highest environmental and labour standards.

While the study acknowledges that existing tools capture broad direct and indirect job effects, it finds that the measurement of employment outcomes within EU external actions remains fragmented. There is limited harmonization across the EU institutions and insufficient systematic attention to job quality and decent work.

The report mentions several promising practices to strengthen job creation and impact measurement frameworks and draws on ILO expertise and tools related to employment impact assessment, underscoring the importance of moving beyond job counts toward metrics that reflect decent work outcomes.

It refers to the ILO’s Employment-Intensive Investment Programme, which promotes labour-intensive infrastructure projects for direct local job creation; and the ILO-EU STRENGTHEN2 project, which advances Employment Impact Assessment practices by developing innovative tools and methodologies to strengthen the systematic measurement of job impacts.

It further notes that the ILO facilitates access to reliable labour statistics to enable more robust and comparable modelling of employment dynamics across countries and sectors.

The study suggests institutionalising decent work as a cross-cutting objective across EU interventions This would mean creating a decent-work marker to track it, adding decent work criteria to how Global Gateway projects are approved and monitored, and making EU funding clearly tied to delivering decent work outcomes.

The findings align with the European Commission’s efforts to operationalize a “360 degrees” approach to investments—placing greater emphasis on social and employment outcomes in development finance, particularly under the Global Gateway.

The ILO stands ready to continue supporting the EU institutions and its Member States on employment impact assessment practices and ensure that investments translate into decent and sustainable employment opportunities.