Publication: More, Better, and More Inclusive Industrial Jobs in Ethiopia: Summary of Evidence Base and Knowledge Gaps
Loading...
Published
2021-09-29
ISSN
Date
2022-01-11
Author(s)
Maaskant, Koen
Editor(s)
Abstract
This note aims to shed light on how Ethiopia’s efforts towards export-led industrialization can create more, better, and more inclusive jobs. It first reviews the evidence on how global value chain participation and industrialization have led to improved employment outcomes across the globe, before turning to the evidence on Ethiopia’s industrialization experience so far. Significant progress in building this evidence base has been made in recent years, including more recently through different analytical outputs produced under the World Bank Group’s analytical program on industrial labor, highlighted in this note. However, significant knowledge gaps remain. The note concludes by outlining ideas for a future research agenda on industrial labor in Ethiopia, focusing on key areas for policy-oriented research.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Maaskant, Koen; Strokova, Victoria. 2021. More, Better, and More Inclusive Industrial Jobs in Ethiopia: Summary of Evidence Base and Knowledge Gaps. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36807 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication The State of Economic Inclusion Report 2024: Pathways to Scale(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-11-20)The State of Economic Inclusion Report (SEI) 2024 explores efforts to scale up economic inclusion programs - bundles of coordinated, multidimensional interventions that support individuals, households, and communities to sustainably increase their incomes and assets - in the context of overlapping crisis. These programs transform the economic lives of the poorest and most vulnerable people, building their resilience and creating job opportunities. The report features data from 405 programs across 88 countries, benefiting over 70 million individuals either directly or indirectly. This marks almost doubling in the number of programs and nearly a 50 percent increase in coverage since the SEI 2021 report. Governments continue to lead in scaling up these economic inclusion programs, covering nearly three-fourths of program participants. However, non-governmental programs have also significantly contributed to the increase in coverage in recent years, in addition to serving as both service providers and capacity building providers for governments. The report offers five important contributions: 1) Positioning economic inclusion programs as crucial for building resilience and providing job opportunities for the poor and vulnerable in the face of overlapping crises. 2) Analyzing the global landscape over the past three years, highlighting the extent to which economic inclusion programs are being customized for diverse contexts and groups, including a cross-cutting focus on gender. 3) Reviewing progress and challenges in the design and implementation of government-led programs, including the interplay with communities, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector. 4) Examining the emerging agenda of designing economic inclusion programs to enhance the long-term climate resilience of poor and vulnerable individuals and communities. 5) Featuring three spotlights that unpack emerging evidence from government-led programs, customization strategies targeting youth, and the increasing role of digital tools and technologies in program delivery. Data from the report are available on the PEI Data Portal (www.peiglobal.org).Publication Skills and Jobs(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-05)The accumulation of human capital through the acquisition of knowledge and skills is recognized as central for economic development. More-educated workers not only have better employment opportunities, they earn more and have more stable and rewarding jobs. They are also more adaptable and mobile. Workers who acquire more skills make other workers and capital more productive and, within the firm, they facilitate the adaptation, adoption, and ultimately invention of new technologies. This is crucial for economic diversification, productivity growth, and ultimately raising the living standards of living of the population. The structure of the note is as follows. First, it examines the different types of market failures, and subsequently reviews the role that governments have played in training systems around the world. Finally it offers a set of proposals for reforming and improving these systems to improve labor market outcomes.Publication More Jobs, Better Jobs : A Priority for Egypt(Washington, DC, 2014-06)Much of the current debate around the recent economic crisis in the Arab Republic of Egypt has focused on unemployment. Although unemployment is an important marker of labor market health, the jobs problem in Egypt precedes the recent crisis and is manifested markedly in other labor market metrics. Indeed, the link between growth and unemployment in Egypt is weak, particularly for men. This chapter argues that the reason for this weak link is partly related to decades of flawed industrial policies that have discouraged investment in employment-generating activities. Industrial policies, including those implemented in the mid-2000s, were never focused on mitigating market failures to promote the emergence of fast-growing, high-productivity firms. Instead, they have worked to preserve insider privileges, leading to growth in sectors that are not labor intensive. Policy makers therefore need to look beyond supply-side focused labor market policies to accelerate employment growth.Publication Structural Transformation and Productivity Growth in Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-12)Uganda’s economy underwent significant structural change in the 2000s whereby the share of non-tradable services in aggregate employment rose by about 7 percentage points at the expense of the production of tradable goods. The process also involved a 12-percentage-point shift in employment away from small and medium enterprises and larger firms in manufacturing and commercial agriculture mainly to microenterprises in retail trade. In addition, the sectoral reallocation of labor on these two dimensions coincided with significant growth in aggregate labor productivity. However, in and of itself, the same reallocation could only have held back, rather than aid, the observed productivity gains. This was because labor was more productive throughout the period in the tradable goods sector than in the non-tradable sector. Moreover, the effect on aggregate labor productivity of the reallocation of employment between the two sectors could only have been reinforced by the impacts on the same of the rise in the employment share of microenterprises. The effect was also strengthened by a parallel employment shift across the age distribution of enterprises that raised sharply the employment share of established firms at the expense of younger ones and startups. Not only was labor consistently less productive in microenterprises than in small and medium enterprises and larger enterprises across all industries throughout the period, it was also typically less productive in more established firms than in younger ones.Publication Tajikistan Jobs Diagnostic(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-01)Tajikistan’s economy is not creating sufficient jobs for its rapidly growing workforce, in particular its burgeoning youth population. As a result, its most valuable asset – human capital – is largely underutilized. Although remittance-driven growth since the early 2000s has led to a steep decline in the poverty rate, poverty remains high. Strong economic growth in the last decade has not resulted from structural transformation that can lead to sustained improvements in the standard of living. Jobs have been created, but these are mainly in low-productivity activities, often in the informal sector. In addition, there are major inequalities in terms of labor market outcomes between population groups and across regions. The report, “Tajikistan Jobs Diagnostic: Strategic Framework for Jobs”, analyzes the main challenges the country faces in creating jobs at the macro, firm, and household levels. It also sets out policy recommendations to enable the country to create more and better jobs that are also more inclusive of women, youth, and other vulnerable population groups.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Media and Messages for Nutrition and Health(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06)The Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) has experienced rapid and significant economic growth over the past decade. However, poor nutritional outcomes remain a concern. Rates of childhood undernutrition are particularly high in remote, rural, and upland areas. Media have the potential to play an important role in shaping health and nutrition–related behaviors and practices as well as in promoting sociocultural and economic development that might contribute to improved nutritional outcomes. This report presents the results of a media audit (MA) that was conducted to inform the development and production of mass media advocacy and communication strategies and materials with a focus on maternal and child health and nutrition that would reach the most people from the poorest communities in northern Lao PDR. Making more people aware of useful information, essential services and products and influencing them to use these effectively is the ultimate goal of mass media campaigns, and the MA measures the potential effectiveness of media efforts to reach this goal. The effectiveness of communication channels to deliver health and nutrition messages to target beneficiaries to ensure maximum reach and uptake can be viewed in terms of preferences, satisfaction, and trust. Overall, the four most accessed media channels for receiving information among communities in the study areas were village announcements, mobile phones, television, and out-of-home (OOH) media. Of the accessed media channels, the top three most preferred channels were village announcements (40 percent), television (26 percent), and mobile phones (19 percent). In terms of trust, village announcements were the most trusted source of information (64 percent), followed by mobile phones (14 percent) and television (11 percent). Hence of all the media channels, village announcements are the most preferred, have the most satisfied users, and are the most trusted source of information in study communities from four provinces in Lao PDR with some of the highest burden of childhood undernutrition.Publication Taxes, Spending, and Equity: International Patterns and Lessons for Developing Countries(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-17)Taxes and public spending underpin the basic administration of government and finance the human capital and infrastructure investments needed for economic growth. They can also have a significant and immediate impact on poverty and inequality. The question of how public finance can support longer-term growth objectives while promoting equity has become even more important in recent years, given the high fiscal deficits and debt levels most countries emerged with in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These included the increasing cost of debt and the need to restart environmentally sustainable growth while helping households address the learning losses and other social scars caused by the pandemic. This paper examines the global evidence on which households pay which taxes and who benefits from what spending, and critically, the net effect on different households across the income distribution. The aim is to identify the patterns and lessons that emerge for designing progressive fiscal policies. A global dataset of 96 countries is assembled, spanning all regions of the world and all national income levels, grounded in the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) approach to fiscal incidence.Publication A Systematic Tale of Two Differing Reviews(Springer, 2017-04-12)Systematic reviews are powerful tools for summarizing vast amounts of data in controversial areas; but their utility is limited by methodological choices and assumptions. Two systematic reviews of literature on the quality of private sector primary care in low and middle income countries (LMIC), published in the same journal within a year, reached conflicting conclusions. The difference in findings reflects different review methodologies, but more importantly, a weak underlying body of literature. A detailed examination of the literature cited in both reviews shows that only one of the underlying studies met the gold standard for methodological robustness. Given the current policy momentum on universal health coverage and primary health care reform across the globe, there is an urgent need for high quality empirical evidence on the quality of private versus public sector primary health care in LMIC.Publication Direct and Indirect Impacts of Transport Mobility on Access to Jobs: Evidence from South Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-12)Access to jobs is essential for economic growth. In Africa, unemployment rates are notably high. This paper reexamines the relationship between transport mobility and labor market outcomes, with a particular focus on the direct and indirect effects of transport connectivity. As predicted by theory, wages are influenced by the level of commuting deterrence. Generally, higher earnings are associated with longer commute times and/or higher commuting costs. Local accessibility is also important, especially for individuals with time constraints. Both direct and indirect impacts are found to be significant in South Africa, where job accessibility has been challenging since the end of apartheid. For the direct impact, the wage elasticity associated with commuting costs is significant. Returns on commute are particularly high for women. Local accessibility to socioeconomic facilities, such as shops and health services, is also found to have a significant impact, consistent with the concept of mobility of care. To enhance employment, therefore, it is crucial to connect people not only to job locations but also to various socioeconomic points of interest, such as markets and hospitals, in an integrated manner. This integration will enable individuals to spend more time working and commuting longer distances.