This report adopts a decent work perspective to approach the challenge of promoting employment and reducing poverty in rural areas by examining issues of employment, social protection, rights and social dialogue in rural areas in an integrated way.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Sub-Saharan Africa's rural population is growing rapidly, and more young people are entering the labour market every year. This raises serious policy questions. Can rural economies absorb enough job seekers? Could better-educated youth transform Africa's rural economies by adopting new technologies and starting businesses? Are policymakers responding to the youth employment challenge? Or will there be widespread unemployment, social instability, and an exodus to cities and abroad? Youth and Jobs in Rural Africa: Beyond Stylized Facts uses survey data to build a nuanced understanding of the constraints and opportunities facing rural youth in Africa. Addressing the questions of Africa's rural youth is currently hampered by major gaps in our knowledge and stylized facts from cross-country trends or studies that do not focus on the core issues. Youth and Jobs in Rural Africa takes a different approach, drawing on household and firm surveys from selected African countries with an explicit focus on rural youth. It argues that a balance between alarm and optimism is warranted, and that Africa's "youth bulge" is not an unprecedented challenge. Jobs in rural areas are limited, but agriculture is transforming and youth are participating, adopting new technologies and running businesses. Governments have adopted youth employment as a priority, but policies often do not address the specific needs of rural populations. Youth and Jobs in Rural Africa emphasizes that by going beyond stylized facts and drawing on more granular analysis, we can design effective policies to turn Africa's youth problem into an opportunity for rural transformation.
Employment is a critical part of the macro-economy and a key driver of economic development. India’s employment policy over the past three decades provides an important case study for understanding how government attitudes to the labour market contribute to an emerging economy’s growth and development. This study contains important insights on the policy challenges faced by one of the world’s most populous, labour abundant economies in securing employment in a context of structural change. The book considers India’s approach to employment policy from a national and global perspective and whether policy settings promote employment intensive growth. Chapters in the first half of the volume evaluate India’s approach to employment policy within the national and international context. This includes the ILO Decent Work program, the national agenda for inclusive growth, and national regulatory frameworks for labour and education. Chapters in the second half of the volume focus on how employment policy works in practice and its impact on manufacturing workers, the self-employed, women, and rural workers. These chapters draw attention to the contradictions within the current policy regime and the need for new approaches. Employment Policy in Emerging Economies will interest scholars, policy makers and students of the Indian economy and South Asia more generally. It will support undergraduate and postgraduate academic teaching in courses on economic development, global political economy, the Indian economy and global labour.
"This Case for Action urges that improving policy coherence between employment and agricultural initiatives and investigating more in the promotion of decent rural employment contribute highly to the interlinked challenges of fighting rural poverty and feeding a growing world population in a sustainable way. Even more importantly, decent work is a fully fledged human right, enshrined in international human rights law, to which each person is entitled as a means of personal development and socio-economic inclusion. While the ILO leads the Global Employment and Decent Work Agenda, FAO has a crucial comparative advantage in promoting decent work in rural areas, specifically with respect to employment in agriculture, including livestock, forestry, fisheries and management of natural resources, as well as agroprocessing and retailing. Given its mandate to raise levels of nutrition, improve agricultural productivity, better the lives of rural populations and contribute to the growth of the world economy, FAO has a significant responsibility within this context. This Case for Action further clarifies the reasoning behind this statement and suggests entry points for increased synergies and inter-disciplinary collaboration."--Introduction.
"A compilation of policy-relevant research by a multidisciplinary group of scholars on the state of families in rural America in the twenty-first century. Examines the impact of economic restructuring on rural Americans and provides policy recommendations for addressing the challenges they face"--Provided by publisher.
This book offers an assessment of the performance, impact, and welfare implications of the world’s largest employment guarantee programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Launched by the Indian government, the programme covers entire rural area of the country. The book presents various micro-level analyses of the programme and its heterogeneous impacts at different scales, almost a decade after its implementation. While there are some doubts over the future of the scheme as well as its magnitude, nature and content, the central government appears committed to it, as a ‘convergence scheme’ of various other welfare and rural development programmes being implemented at both national and state level. The book discusses the outcomes of the programme and offers critical insights into the lessons learnt, not only in the context of India, but also for similar schemes in countries in South and South-East Asia as well as in Africa, and Latin America. Adopting inter-disciplinary perspectives in analysing these issues, this unique book uses a judicious mix of methods---integrating quantitative and qualitative tools---and will be an invaluable resource for analysts, NGOs, policymakers and academics alike.
This Guidance document is developed in the framework of SO3-OO2 and aims to assist FAO Members in incorporating decent rural employment (DRE) interventions across different agricultural sub-sectors. The Guidance document is mainly designed for policy makers and staff responsible for strategic planning and programme development in the ministries responsible for agriculture and planning. It also addresses other public and private institutions involved in strategic planning for agricultural and rural development such as employers, producers and workers' organizations.
This report addresses the subject of decent rural employment for youth in the forestry sector. It is based on case studies carried out across different processes in the value chain within the sector in Uganda, ranging from seedbed development through to plantation management, saw logging and trading. Findings indicate that a considerable number of Uganda’s legal and policy frameworks emphasize the participation of youth in the labour market, especially given that young people constitute a large majority of the country’s population. However, only a few of these frameworks focus on decent work, whether for young people or the country’s workers more generally. The case studies revealed that efforts to provide decent employment were mixed. Larger and more formally oriented forestry enterprises were more likely to focus on decent work provisions for their labourers. Smaller enterprises, while aware of most of their decent work obligations, were unable to implement them due to resource constraints. The case studies also revealed numerous opportunities for youth to participate in the forestry sector. These included tapping into existing government and NGO programmes ranging from tree planting to plantation management. Additional employment opportunities were provided by businesses in the sector and the management of woodlots for poles and fuel. The limiting factors for youth participation in the sector largely arise from the huge investment cost incurred by such participation, particularly access to and utilization of land and financial resources. Other limitations included a lack of relevant training and skills and poor working conditions. These conditions are compounded by few numbers and limited capacity of officers within the Labour Directorate to administer and enforce labour regulations.The report proposes decent work indicators and recommends both policy and implementation strategies to increase youth participation and decent work practices in the sector.
An international joint study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and UNESCO's International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) was conducted on education and rural development to review the status of the topic from the standpoint of public policies and the conceptual frameworks on which they are based and also to shed light on what may be called "good practice." The findings of the study are meant to serve not as models, but rather as points of reference for all those who are seeking ways of developing education in rural areas and contributing more effectively to rural development. Chapter I, "Education and Rural Development: Setting the Framework" (David Atchoarena and Charlotte Sedel), provides a contextual and theoretical introduction to the new rural development and poverty reduction thinking, as well as a discussion on the contribution of education to rural development. In Chapter II, "Basic Education in Rural Areas: Status, Issues and Prospects" (Michael Lakin with Lavinia Gasperini), the book reviews in depth the provision of basic education in rural areas and offers some policy directions for improvement. Further exploring a particular dimension of basic education, Chapter III, "Making Learning Relevant: Principles and Evidence from Recent Experiences" (Peter Taylor, Daniel Desmond, James Grieshop and Aarti Subramaniam), devotes specific attention to strategies linking the formal school teaching with students' life environment, including agriculture, and to garden-based learning. The intention is to provide updated information and new insights on much-debated aspects which are often associated with rural areas although their application is much broader. Chapter IV, "Strategies and Institutions for Promoting Skills for Rural Development" (David Atchoarena, Ian Wallace, Kate Green, and Candido Alberto Gomes), shifts the analysis from education to work and discusses the implications of the transformation of rural labor markets for skill development. A particular concern is the rise in rural non-farm employment and the need to enlarge the policy focus from agricultural education and training to technical and vocational education for rural development. This debate is taken further in Chapter V, "Higher Education and Rural Development: A New Perspective" (Charles Maguire and David Atchoarena), which considers higher level skills and the contribution of the tertiary education sector to rural development. Special attention is given to the reform of higher agricultural institutions and lessons based on case studies are provided to document good practice in institutional reform. Finally, Chapter VI, "Main Findings and Implications for Policy and Donor Support" (David Atchoarena with Lavinia Gasperini, Michael Lakin and Charles Maguire), concentrates on the main findings of the study and discusses policy implications and possible responses for donors and countries. (Contains 28 tables, 14 figures, and 64 boxes.).