EMPLOYMENT Seminar Series: Rigorous evidence on skills for better jobs: Recent insights from Africa

Background

Skills trainings that target individuals or small businesses feature prominently in the development assistance landscape. They are an important vehicle for both bilateral and multilateral economic support. One estimate puts the volume of skills training interventions facilitated by the World Bank alone at about a billion U.S. dollars per year. The German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) and the RWI, Leibniz Institute for Economic Research, have been commissioned by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), to conduct rigorous evaluations of skills intervention in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire since 2020 to provide research support for Germany’s Special Initiative “Decent Work for a Just Transition”.

Together with the BMZ and the implementing organizations, three suitable programmes were identified for evaluation:

• The “ProfArts” programme in Ghana is a training programme for skilled workers in the construction sector and aims to certify and professionalize often informally trained craftsmen and women.
• The “N4G” program offers young women with no prior knowledge training in the fashion industry.
• “PAP-PME” in Côte d’Ivoire consists of a consulting service for SMEs with the explicit objective to improve workplace conditions.

The selected programmes have been rigorously evaluated using Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) to identify the causal effects of the interventions on the beneficiaries; for example, the effect of a training programme on outcomes such as person’s subsequent employability, income, or the quality of employment and job satisfaction.

The results show modest improvements in job quality and pay. Most importantly, modest average effects conceal heterogenous effects that are highly context-dependent (e.g. market for skills, training “saturation”) and vary with implementation quality and intensity. Specifically, a focus on fast implementation and breadth can compromise impacts. Very strong changes in control group outcomes illustrate the importance of rigorous designs to assess impacts.

Objective

The purpose of the seminar is to present the main findings of the series of rigorous impact evaluations, discuss the implications for active labour market policies, and reflect on how to best use and produce rigorous evidence in policy practice.

Event presenters, discussants and chair

Presenters:   Discussants: Chair:

• Sangheon Lee, Director, ILO/Employment.