Africa-EU relations: Africa's employment challenges

The poverty and employment crises on the African continent are accelerating to a worrying extent. The Covid-19 pandemic further highlights how fragile the situation is for most people in sub-Saharan Africa. Proposals to help eradicate both crises through growth, improving business environments or increasing foreign direct investment are numerous. However, many proposals and existing policies – also promoted by the EU - do not live up to the expected impact. High growth does not go hand in hand with more and better jobs and neither does it cause the expected easing in the labour markets. Thus, job opportunities are continuously lacking and, consequently, social challenges are on the rise.

In our next roundtable on EU-Africa relations, we would like to discuss the shortcomings of existing policy interventions around economic development and job creation as well as strategies for much-needed reforms. The discussion will be kicked  off by Prof. Dr. em. Robert Kappel who will present his recent study on Africa’s employment challenges. With this roundtable we hope to contribute to the development of a comprehensive EU policy approach on the African employment challenges.

The roundtable is jointly organised by FES EU Office and Dr. Joachim Schuster MEP. English-German interpretation will be provided. Please find the programme attached.