BY GIRMACHEW GASHAW
Ethiopia is taking a series of measures which are aimed towards reducing unemployment and improving productivity. To this end, the agricultural sector has been given an emphasis, especially focusing on agro business, believing that it would highly support to absorb the existing labor force.
Two years elapsed after the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to implement a project entitled “ProAgro Ethiopia – Promotion of Decent Work in Agribusiness” signed between the Ethiopian government and the International Labor Organization (ILO).
Designed under the framework of the Germany Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (BMZ) Special Initiative on Training and Job Creation, ProAgro project has been implementing in Amhara and Sidama states in Ethiopia over a period of 42 months with an operating budget of five million euro.
The sectors of food and vegetables, edible oils and poultry have been identified as having huge potential to undertake deeper and focused work around job creation, working standards and social dialogue.
ILO works in partnership with the government of Ethiopia through the Ministry of Labor And Skills, Ministry of Industry and Federation of Ethiopian trade unions to make this project happen.
The project primarily creates decent jobs as per the ILO’s definition. The project bothers not only quantity but also quality. Realizing that Ethiopia has huge amount of unemployed youth population, ILO is bringing so much of investment to the country. It is setting up industrial parks and investment strategy attracting foreign direct investment focused on creating jobs in the country. While the jobs are getting created, there are some gaps related to lack of employability skills which the young people don’t have. Investors, employers and enterprises are constantly challenged as they do not have skilled labor forces contribute to their work.
Second there is also a challenge in relation to working conditions particularly ensuring the right to workers. To date, there is no minimum wage law in Ethiopia. Thus, ILO has been working with the Ministry of Labor and Skills for the last few years addressing the stated challenge.
The third is all about the fact that until now the trust or the focus has to be enterprise development. It has been the way of thinking within the government which jobs needs to be created push the young people to set up the enterprises which is a great strategy. However it misses certain other elements to make this happen. Access to finance, market linkages, technology transfer, use of digitization and IT are some of the areas that required a lot of investment.
The project has four clear outcomes. One is, creating conducive ecosystem for decent jobs and sustainable investment. Enhance the capacity of Investment Promotion Agencies (Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC), the Regional Investment Bureaus (RIBs), Ministry of Labor and Skills, and Ministry of Industry (MOI) to influence and monitor the jobs intensity and sustainability of investments. It Supports the “local ecosystem” for employment and training services to better cater for the different needs of the employers and job seekers in the agribusiness sector.
Under this outcome, the project will work at increasing the number of people employed in the target regions and sectors, enhancing the satisfaction rates of job seekers with available local employment services and also working at improving the satisfaction rates of foreign and local investors with the support services offered by investment promotion agencies and the wider local employment ecosystem in the target regions in the country.
Second, social dialogue and inclusive collective bargaining are promoted as key means of achieving decent work and stable industrial relations in the sector. In this case, decent work standards and workers’ rights advocated and promoted.
Under this outcome, the project will work towards improving the working conditions, wages, and productivity between companies and workers by increasing the number of enterprise-level local or sectorial agreements. This will result in an increase in the number of workers (women, men, and youth) who will benefit from the improved working conditions (working time, operational safety and health, wages, harassment, and other key aspects).
Third is quality and more demand oriented TVETs and trainings that increase employability and job prospects developed. This enhances collaboration, advocacy and capacity building on Skills Governance through the establishment of Sector Skills Councils (SSC) at the federal and regional levels. It also designs and develops demand driven short term trainings to enhance employability in the agribusiness sector.
Under this outcome, the project will work to increase the number of trainees employed as a result of the traineeships/apprenticeships/short-term training courses, the number of people who have completed technical short-term and core-skills/TVET programs, and the number of graduates of work-based learning programs.
Conducting enterprise development and entrepreneurship trainings is the fourth outcome expected from the project. Systemic bottlenecks hindering the performance of selected agribusiness sub sectors identified, innovative interventions introduced through collaborations with local partners. Business development and financial service provider’s better match their services to the needs of local enterprises in selected sectors.
Stakeholders have developed their capacity to advocate for an improved enabling environment. Young, women, and men have access to entrepreneurship opportunities in the agribusiness sector. Under this outcome the project will work to raise the number of enterprises supported and the people who benefit from improved jobs (higher income) in the target value chains.
“Our project has turned two years and we are at the half- way mark, having started in September 2020 in Ethiopia. This thereby merits some reflection and retrospection of time gone by,” Ruchika Bahl, International labor organization (ILO) Chief Technical Advisor to Ethiopia said.
Adding she said; “We excitedly designed this first ILO project to create decent jobs in the agribusiness sector in Ethiopia jointly with the Government of Ethiopia in two regions i.e. Amhara and Sidama but soon after it was launched, we were hit by the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic and then faced with the humanitarian crisis in the northern part of the country. This double whammy impacted the work and the progress given the lack of staff mobility, team members working remotely and changed priorities of our tripartite partners both at the federal and regional levels.”
Nevertheless, as to her, they continued to strive by using virtual and online interactions to engage with partners and relying on local consultants to keep the movement on. The entire inception phase of the project was executed online.
She further elaborated that they put together a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system for the project and established a partner M&E working group. An independent project evaluability assessment was also undertaken during the period.
The real momentum was gained earlier last year in February 2022 once the humanitarian crisis in the country had calmed down. The team went on an overdrive and the high energy and enthusiasm were appreciated by their partners across the board. This year has been crucial to bringing the project’s speed back on track, she said.
ILO undertook a joint tripartite mission to the Sidama region to prioritize the issues around collective bargaining and social dialogue both for workers and agro enterprises. A productivity assessment to developa business case for investment in better working conditions in agro-processors to enhance productivity was carried out.
Following the positive recommendations, the project then entered into a partnership with the Ethiopian Kaizen Institute to further contribute to the development of sustainable, responsible, and competitive agro small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by equipping enterprises with need-based capacity building to enhance productivity using the ILO SCORE approach. Approximately, 20 agro enterprises will benefit directly together with 3000 workers during the project’s life time.
The project has also partnered with the federal Ethiopian Cooperative Agency and conducted training of trainers to build the capacities of federal and regional cooperative agencies and cooperative service providers on cooperative development, using the ILO tools. These capacity building efforts will primarily contribute to addressing market access gaps identified by ILO cooperative assessment and help selected cooperatives establish partnerships with private sector/value chain actors.
Capacity building trainings for the Ethiopian Investment Commission and Regional Investment Bureau’s functionaries on topics of investment attraction and aftercare targeting with reference to international standards was carried out.
ILO also organized a high-level study tour for senior officials of the Government of Ethiopia and social partners led by the State Minister of Labor and Skills to draw lesson from the experience of the functioning of the Indian National Skills Development Council (NSDC) in setting up agro-processing Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) to support and ensure enhanced quality and more demand oriented TVET trainings that increases employability and job prospects as part of skills development intervention.
As part of enterprise development work, the project is supporting potential MSMEs through the provision of technical support and capacity building trainings to enhance their business management skills and productivity to increase their income and create jobs. To achieve this, the ILO business management tool, SIYB (Start and Improve your Business) is being used in both Amhara and Sidama regions.
Accordingly, the project also launched the first employment services centre in the Yergalem agro-processing industrial park and developed the first ‘on the job training’ module aimed to be used for industry training in the poultry sector. As the project steps into its next two final years of operation, the focus will be on sustainability and scale ups. The enterprises need seed funding and access to finance along with market linkages. These enterprises will have to be supported as well the agripreneurs. Moving forward, the project will thereby design and execute strategies to address this gap together with the regional partners.
Working together with sectoral associations to enhance private sector engagement in skills development shall also be pursued. Together with the Ethiopian Poultry Producers and Processors Association, the project will pilot the ‘on-the job training module’ which will facilitate the development and supply of skilled labor force in the poultry sector.
The Ethiopian Herald January 15/2023
