GENEVA (ILO News) – Owei Lakemfa, General Secretary of the Organization of African Trade Union Unity (OATUU) expressed his views on the challenges and opportunities faced by Unions to organize informal workers in Africa. The informal economy is a major challenge for workers’ rights, social protection and development in Africa. It has a negative impact on the development of sustainable enterprises, fair competition and national revenues.
In Africa, fighting poverty requires promoting decent work within both the formal and the informal economy. The International Labour Conference (ILC) stressed that most people enter the informal economy not by choice, but as a consequence of a lack of opportunities in the formal economy. The conclusions also call for ILO Member states to take urgent and appropriate measures to enable the transition from the informal to the formal economy, recognizing both the large diversity of the informal economy and different national contexts.
One of the strongest obstacles to designing sound policies to address decent work deficits in the informal economy is the lack of research studies linking the pattern of growth and the informal economy.
The term ‘informal economy’ “refers to all economic activities by workers and economic units that are – in law or in practice – not covered or insufficiently covered by formal arrangements and informal work which can be carried out across all the sectors of the economy both in public and private spaces.”
“If significant progress towards the transition from the informal to the formal economy is not made, our efforts to achieve inclusive and sustainable development will never succeed,” said Virgil Seafield, Chairperson of the tripartite committee that drafted the conclusions and government representative from South Africa.
In order to address the entire challenge of the transition to formality, individual countries, along with the social partners, would need to design an integrated set of policies and programmes.
“The best pathway to formalization for informal economy operators is business development measures that would make enterprises more viable. Our work has been testament to the strength of social dialogue in seeking resolutions to issues of contention,” added Alexander Frimpong, employer vice-chairperson of the same tripartite committee from Ghana.
