Productive employment is a key pathway to poverty reduction. This pathway is shaped by great structural challenges in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), the region with the world’s youngest and fastest-growing labour force, characterized by informality and underemployment.
Improved employment has long been a priority in Swedish development cooperation and Sida has financed a broad portfolio of projects in SSA. Yet, concerns have been raised about how effectively interventions translate into more jobs or higher incomes, and about how well results are monitored and reported.
The EBA report “Employment and Earnings in Sub-Saharan Africa: Sida’s Contribution” (EBA 2025:06) responds to this by exploring the effectiveness of Sida-financed projects in improving employment outcomes in SSA during the period 2011–2021. The study is based on a comprehensive portfolio analysis and two in-depth case studies in Rwanda and Tanzania.
Overall, the evaluation shows that improving employment outcomes in SSA is less about counting new jobs and more about supporting sustained earnings increases in economies characterised by informality and gradual structural transformation.
Main conclusions:
- Sida finances a broad and relevant portfolio of projects targeting employment outcomes, but only around 20 percent of these have the potential to create new jobs.
- Most projects focus on earnings gains, which is appropriate in SSA where underemployment and working poverty are more widespread than unemployment.
- Integrated interventions that combine skills development with access to finance, mentoring, and market linkages perform better than stand-alone technical and vocational education and training.
- Cash-based interventions have been effective in raising incomes and generating positive spillover effects in local economies.
- Monitoring and reporting of employment outcomes are often weak, limiting learning and accountability.