The Director of the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Decent Work Team for East and Southern Africa, Dr. Joni Toko Musabayana paid a courtesy call on the Executive Secretary of Southern African Development Community (SADC), H.E Mr. Elias Mpedi Magosi, on 25 November 2022 in Gaborone, Botswana. The two leaders deliberated on a number of issues of interest to the world of work in SADC, including in particular the challenges of unemployment and underemployment across the region.
Dr. Musabayana expressed the ILO’s appreciation for the long history of excellent relations with the regional bloc. He informed the Executive Secretary that SADC had enabled significant improvements in the labour administration systems of Member States through its key policy frameworks, as well as regional decisions and positions. The regional policies reflected upon during the meeting included the SADC Employment and Labour Policy Framework, the SADC Decent Work Programme and the SADC Labour Migration Action Plan. Through these instruments, it was noted that SADC Member States had successfully put in place wide-ranging measures to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the workplace, including through guaranteeing occupational safety and health and providing fiscal support to protect livelihoods and income security.
The Executive Secretary thanked the ILO for its support to the SADC Member States and Secretariat in the efforts to create greater opportunities for citizens to access decent work. He emphasised the need for the two organisations to enhance cooperation in the area of job creation, given that many people especially youth were failing to access gainful or productive employment opportunities. He therefore welcomed ILO support towards SADC’s ongoing initiatives to build Member States’ capacities to design and implement responsive macroeconomic and sectoral policies that directly promote job creation through sector-based job targeting and improved coordination of key government Ministries and agencies, including fiscal and monetary authorities as well as the private sector.
H.E Mr. Magosi also highlighted that the socio-economic challenges being faced by Member States required greater investment in strengthening tripartite and social dialogue mechanisms at the regional and country level. He remarked that closer and meaningful cooperation involving governments, employers and workers had the potential to unlock productivity gains and help forge a social contract, which is necessary for countries to successfully weather the many and recurrent economic shocks that are being faced locally and globally. In this regard, Dr. Musabayana commended SADC for having consolidated the practice of tripartism through the active participation of social partners in regional integration programmes, notably within the SADC Employment and Labour Sector. Dr. Musabayana mentioned that as a result of SADC’s leadership through its labour sector, the East and Southern Africa regions were the key drivers of ILO’s decent work programming in Africa.
The two leaders committed to forge a stronger partnership and agreed to immediately undertake the following steps:
- To review the SADC-ILO Memorandum of Understanding, entered into in April 2007, in order to include new and pertinent areas of cooperation in line with the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP) 2020-2030 and other contemporary frameworks and strategies;
- To develop joint programmes and projects on decent work and job creation, especially for young women and men;
- To strengthen the harmonisation of labour policies and laws in Member States, and to expedite the development of the SADC Protocol on Employment and Labour; and
- To enhance cooperation on labour migration management, by exploring greater cooperation through existing and new initiatives to protect the rights of migrant workers and enhance skills sharing among Member States.
Dr. Musabayana underlined the ILO’s commitment to actively support SADC’s regional integration agenda, and welcomed the opportunity to re-engage the Executive Secretary to review progress in the near future. HE Mr. Magosi reiterated his commitment to promote the decent work agenda across the region and gave his message of goodwill for the new ILO Director-General, Mr. Gilbert Houngbo, who had recently begun his first term.
