With one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the world, South Africa’s planning for a just transition needs to take into account the vulnerabilities of its youth cohorts, especially those that can be qualified as “not in education, employment or training” (NEET). For example, a recent study conducted in the framework of the EU-AFD Research Facility on Inequalities revealed that the Mpumalanga province, the region with the highest exposure to the coal exit, has had a NEET youth rate of over 37% for the past decade, with almost three-quarters of them living in income-poor households.

Since 2019, the National Business Initiative (NBI) has been spearheading a multi-faceted and multi-sector partnership, which focuses on expanding and growing pathways for young people to access Installation, Repair and Maintenance (IRM) occupations. The IRM initiative is strategically aligned to various initiatives of the government to drive inclusive recovery and revitalisation of the economy, particularly in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. It has subsequently been incorporated as part of the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention (PYEI). The Initiative works on the premise that, by supporting township-based IRM entrepreneurs to strengthen and grow their businesses, and by linking them to localised market opportunities, there will be a concomitant increase in the demand for skilled labour, which could lead to the creation of employment opportunities. Therefore, it is a direct response to the youth unemployment challenge.

Collaborating closely with the NBI, the Centre of Researching Education and Labor (REAL Centre) contributed its expertise to the comprehensive analysis of the four key regions identified in Phase 1 of the IRM skills ecosystem mapping project: Atlantis (Western Cape), Mandeni (KwaZulu-Natal), Mamelodi (Gauteng), and Kathorus (Gauteng). Building upon the success of this initial phase, the REAL Centre will now expand the project's scope to the Nkangala district municipality, which is one of the three districts of Mpumalanga province.

This work is also part of AFD's dialogue with the South African authorities on the just transition and the reduction of inequalities.
 

Find out more about the Extension in South Africa
 

This research project will conduct a detailed analysis of the skills ecosystem that could feed into the various initiatives to support local authorities and communities in the Nkangala district, which concentrates the coal-fired power plants that will be closed as a result of just transition policies.

Phase 1 of the project revealed that an IRM skills ecosystem mapping project is crucial for addressing inequality by thoroughly analysing the socioeconomic and demographic profiles of diverse townships in South Africa. 

By identifying specific skill gaps and understanding the challenges faced by Small, Medium, and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) in these areas, the study can inform targeted interventions aimed at reducing inequality in access to employment and economic opportunities. 

Furthermore, by examining the role of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions and conducting a comprehensive literature review, the study ensures that proposed interventions are evidence-based and tailored to the needs of the communities studied. 

Ultimately, the study's approach of generating actionable insights in collaboration with stakeholders aims to drive meaningful impact and promote inclusive economic development in underserved regions, contributing to efforts to reduce inequality, to advance the principles of just transition and to foster a more inclusive society.

Building on Phase 1 of the IRM skills ecosystem mapping, researchers will apply the following method:

1. They will set the context for the Nkangala district through desktop research and a few selected key informant interviews;
2. They will collect primary data and set up fieldwork through stakeholder mapping workshops and key informant interviews to collect data;
3. They will then provide an initial narrative on the overarching local skills ecosystem from the site mapping exercise and will draw on the document review and contextual work on the Nkangala district. Drawing on Spours’ (2019) work on ecosystems, they will use three core elements: the dimensions of verticalities, horizontalities and mediation to understand and analyse the skills ecosystem Nkangala district and to guide the cross-site analysis, building on the work undertaken during Phase 1.
    

You will find below the different research papers related to this project:

• Skills ecosystem mapping of MSMEs located within the Nkangala District Municipality

South Africa is one of the largest GHG emitting countries due to its heavy reliance on coal for most of its energy needs. The South African government is cognisant of the fact that shifting away from carbon-intensive forms of technology to more sustainable ways of production means that some jobs will be destroyed, and new ones will be created. A concern therefore for policy makers is ensuring that the transition is just and that it will not exacerbate existing inequalities.

South Africa comes into this employment transition discussion facing a triple challenge: persistent high unemployment, inequality, and poverty. This situation has worsened since the 2007-2008 financial crisis and was further exacerbated by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. This complicates the discussion of an optimal social transition to a “green” economy.

This project is part of a wider research program on the just transition in South Africa, conducted with several South African research centres and in close collaboration with the South African authorities.

See also: Research on inequalities

The project will carry out a study of the South African labour market with the aim of identifying the proportion and distribution of workers engaged in “green” jobs and “brown” jobs – in other words, jobs that are ecologically sustainable and jobs that are not. It will also examine the possibilities of transitioning labour from brown jobs into low emitting sectors.

We will measure green intensity as the share of total tasks in an occupation that are green. We will also identify the share of workers in green jobs using employment information from surveys such as the Quarterly Labour Force Surveys (QLFSs) and the Census. Using industry level information on pollution, we will go further to identify occupations more likely to be in highly polluting sectors than in any other sectors. This will be described as brown jobs. Next, we will utilise occupational tasks, skills, and knowledge information from the O*NET dataset to identify important skills for brown and green jobs. This will enable us to estimate the probability of transitioning workers to green jobs. Finally, to map the location of green jobs, we will use employment information from the Census, the Community Survey, and the Spatial Tax data.

South Africa’s Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan was launched in October 2020 by the Presidency in response to the economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides the Presidential Employment Stimulus program, it included emergency social protection measures, among which the introduction of a special Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress grant (SRD), providing ZAR350 per month for unemployed people not covered by any other form of support. The South African government now seeks to develop options for the future of SRD grant.

Find out more about the Extension in South Africa

The objective of this research project is to produce motivated recommendations on how the SRD should be designed going forward into the longer term, in order to maximize the impact of the grant on employment outcomes and to ensure it effectively reduces poverty, while maintaining its cost to an acceptable level:

1. To maximise the impact of the grant on employment, the project needs to understand how to design and label the grant to encourage its use for job search.
2. To ensure the grant effectively reduces poverty, the project must figure out the most cost-effective way to target and assess the eligibility of recipients. Moreover, poverty reductions can be scaled up by determining measures that could encourage take up among the most disadvantaged. 

Once these goals have been achieved, and in order to inform public decision-making, these findings must be communicated to a number of stakeholders in government and civil society.

This project is part of a wider research program conducted with several South African research centres and in close collaboration with the South African Presidency. Four other research projects analysing the externalities of the Covid-19 stimulus policy are currently being developed as part of the first pillar of the Extension's activities in South Africa.

This research project uses the model generated to conduct the 2014/2015 fiscal incidence assessment and introduces updated data for 2019-2021. It simulates five scenarios around eligibility criteria, targeting mechanisms, value, disbursement model and conditionalities and computes the potential impact on poverty and employment outcomes.

You will find below the research paper related to this project: 

• Proposal for the extension, redesign and repurposing of the SRD for the goal of poverty reduction

It is worth noting that another paper has been published on the implications of the SRD grant, funded by AFD outside the Research Facility on Inequalities: Systemic exclusion from a South African social assistance transfer (February 2024)

Labour market panel surveys (LMPS) are household surveys that allow to observe the evolution of labour market dynamics by following the same individuals over several years. Conducted in Egypt in 1998, 2006, 2012 and 2018, these surveys have become the focus of research on the labour market, human development, migration, the (de)composition of families and social protection. They make it possible to analyse the impacts of the various tax and monetary reforms undertaken in the country. The data also sheds light on the opportunities and challenges women face in the labour market. 

This research partnership supports the implementation of the fifth wave of the ELMPS survey in Egypt by providing co-financing dedicated to data collection and dissemination. The objective of this collaboration is to support the production of the wave, as well as presentation chapters of this wave, four of which will be published as research papers to deepen knowledge on the Egyptian labour market. Particular attention will be paid to the analysis of the labour market situation in Egypt following the Covid-19 pandemic, thus providing relevant insights in this post-pandemic context.

The new ELMPS 2023 wave is largely based on the questionnaire of the 2018 ELMPS survey, which addressed issues such as demography, employment, income, migration and well-being. 

This edition differs from previous editions in several ways:

• It incorporates questions dedicated to assessing the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic;
• It broadens its coverage by including new components, such as the digital economy (gig economy) and employment measurement in the emerging green and circular economy sectors;
• It provides for a skills-based module, with the inclusion of a wider variety of skills, which will assess the extent to which workers' skills match the needs of the labour market.

These improvements are intended to ensure more comprehensive and representative data, thus providing a solid foundation for informed public policy development.

The ELMPS 2023 database will be made available on the ERF website. 

Research papers will focus specifically on:

• The role of internal migration in territorial dynamics;
• The evolution of the insurance system and its coverage;
• Technology in the labour market and its use;
• The green economy and the labour market. 

A book will be published covering the themes of 1) labour supply; 2) employment structure; 3) inequalities; 4) mismatch between labour supply and demand; 5) gender and occupational segregation; 6) international migration; 7) social protection; 8) technology in the workplace; 9) green economy; 10) small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs); 11) care activities (paid and unpaid); 12) food security and resilience to shocks.

• Dr. Cecilia Poggi, Research Officer, AFD
• Prof. Ragui Assaad, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota