By Modupe Gbadeyanka
About 3.3 million are projected to be created by 2030 from Africa’s green economy, with Nigeria contributing between 60,000 and 240,000, a new study by Shortlist and FSD Africa, with analysis from the Boston Consulting Group said.
The research titled Forecasting Green Jobs in Africa outlined key strategies required to cultivate Africa’s green jobs ecosystem: from targeted investments in high-potential sectors and value chains, the fostering of cross-sector collaboration among governments, private sector, educational institutions and investors, to the development of comprehensive support policies for green sectors.
It also called for further analysis and granularity to labour demand key value chains to identify Africa’s current skilled labour supply and any potential gaps.
The report, a first of its kind that forecasts the new direct job creation potential of 12 “green” sub-sectors by 2030, is expecting the majority of the new jobs in the renewable energy sector, particularly solar, with focus on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, which together account for more than a fifth (22 per cent) of new jobs, and in key sectors such as renewable energy, e-mobility, agriculture, construction and manufacturing.
It was discovered that South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria represent the highest job creation potential (16 per cent) due to population, gross domestic product (GDP) and industry maturity.
In addition, the renewable energy sector alone is expected to generate up to 2 million jobs (70 per cent of the total) of which 1.7 million will be in solar.
Further, solar is the most important contributor to green jobs in South Africa (140,000 jobs) and Kenya (111,000 jobs), while hydroelectric is forecast to be the leading employer in both DRC (16,000 jobs) and
Ethiopia (33,000), and agriculture and nature are forecast to produce up to 700,000 jobs (25 per cent of total), of which more than half (377,000) will come from climate-smart agriculture technology.
While some experts have suggested that up to 100 million green jobs may be created by 2050, this report takes a more near-term, sober, and realistic look at the job creation potential of just 12 specific sub-sectors or value chains and only until 2030.
Significantly, it predicts that 60 per cent of the employment generated by the green economy over the coming six years will be skilled or white-collar in nature. Within this, 10 per cent constitute “advanced jobs” (highly skilled, requiring university degrees to fulfil), whilst a further 30 per cent are projected to be “specialized” (requiring certification or vocational training) and 20% will be administrative in emphasis.
Crucially, these job types tend to attract higher salaries and will, therefore, play a central role in spurring the growth of the middle class in countries hosting these high-growth sectors. Important also is the stability of the unskilled jobs created – which will offer ladders up the employment scale for candidates, whose employability will be enhanced by access to training and experience.
“There is a cross-sector effort across Africa to spur employment and sustainable development,” said Mark Napier, CEO of FSD Africa, “but stakeholders lack a shared, granular understanding of where the green jobs are going to come from. This report offers a methodology for forecasting green jobs which allows us to get practical about where we need to invest to make these jobs happen.”
“This is the first public report that takes seriously the notion that human capital and talent is important as both an input to green economic growth and as a positive outcome – in the form of millions of new, direct jobs,” says Paul Breloff, CEO of Shortlist. “Now policymakers, and funders, and workforce developers need to step up to meet this near-term demand with effective training, apprenticeships, and job/skill matching, in hopes of achieving Africa’s green promise.”
