Livelihoods and labour

Every September, presidents and ministers meet in New York for the opening of the UN General Assembly. This year, jobs came up mainly in speeches about young people. Zambia called its youth an asset, and several leaders invited investors to work with their young people. No government or funder announced money for jobs. For young Africans looking for work, the week brought promises and no new money.

The decisions that mattered for African workers were taken in Washington. Since 1 January 2026 the United States has stopped all entry for citizens of 12 African countries. It has partly restricted entry for 14 more, including Nigeria, Senegal, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. The partial ban covers visas for visitors, students and exchange programmes. On 3 August the United States also made its visa bond scheme permanent for business and tourist visas. Under it, a traveller must pay a deposit of $10,000, $15,000 or $20,000 before the visa is issued. Thirty of the 50 countries on the list are African. In the trial year, visitor visas issued to these countries fell by 83%. For many Africans, a trip to the United States to study, trade or visit family is now out of reach.

Europe also tightened its borders. The European Union's new rules on migration and asylum began on 12 June. Every person who arrives without permission is now screened at the border within seven days. One trade decision helped. In early September the United States renewed the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) until 31 December 2028. The law lets eligible African goods enter the US market without import duty. It also still lets clothing makers use fabric from outside Africa. Clothing makes up about 70% of Kenya's exports to the United States and supports more than 66,000 direct jobs. For Kenya, the renewal keeps its largest export to the United States open.

The International Labour Organization (ILO), the UN agency for work, puts youth unemployment in sub-Saharan Africa at 8.4% in 2025. That figure looks low because most young people cannot afford to have no work at all. They take whatever informal work they can find. A better measure is the share of young people who are not working, studying or training. The ILO puts that share at 21.6%, more than one in five. Nearly two-thirds of the growth in the world's youth population now happens in this region. In low and lower-middle income countries, nearly nine in ten young workers are in informal jobs. Two in three workers aged 25 to 29 are still in insecure work. The low unemployment rate hides how few young Africans have a steady job.

The World Bank expects the region's workforce to grow by more than 620 million people between 2025 and 2050. Only 24% of workers now earn a wage. About three in four work in small, informal, family-run businesses. Economic growth adds very few wage jobs. When the economy grows by 1%, the share of wage jobs rises by only 0.04 percentage points. Factories also count for less than they did. Manufacturing fell from 13.9% of the region's economy in 2000 to 9.6% in 2025. On present trends, most new workers will end up in the same small informal firms.

Money sent home by Africans working abroad, called remittances, reached about $57 billion in the region in 2024. Sending $200 to sub-Saharan Africa costs 8.46% on average, more than anywhere else. Digital services cost less than cash services, and mobile money costs less than a bank transfer. The cheapest routes start in rich countries, for example 1.96% from the United Kingdom to Nigeria. The dearest run between African countries. Sending money from South Africa costs 12.49% to Zimbabwe and 31.48% to Malawi. Families on these routes lose a large part of every transfer before it arrives.

Since 1 January 2026 the United States has taxed money transfers paid in cash at 1%. Transfers paid from a US bank account or card are not taxed. The detailed rules are still only a draft. The tax adds to the cost of the cash route, which was already the dearer one for families.

South Africa's official unemployment rate rose to 32.7% in the first quarter of 2026. Among people aged 15 to 34, 45.8% had no job. Lesotho shows how fragile export jobs can be. Its clothing factories employ about 34,000 people, and three in four of them are women. AGOA lapsed in September 2025, when a 15% US tariff was already in place, and the government declared a national disaster. The renewal protects these jobs only until the end of 2028.

Kenya received $5.04 billion in remittances in 2025, but growth slowed to 1.9%, the slowest since 2009. The national statistics office finds that 43.5% of this money comes from the United States. In the first half of 2026, money from the United States fell by 12.6% to $1.18 billion. Sending $200 from the United States to Kenya costs 4.26% on average, while sending it from Kenya to Uganda costs 12.75%. In September 2024 Kenya signed a labour agreement with Germany covering skills, social protection and workers' rights. Kenya therefore faces both a shrinking US flow and a costly route next door.

Ethiopia has made sending workers abroad part of its jobs policy. Its labour ministry plans to place 800,000 citizens abroad this financial year, mainly in Saudi Arabia. In 2014 it placed 40,000. In October 2025 Saudi Arabia announced the end of the kafala system, which tied migrant workers to one employer. The change includes domestic workers. Monitors say it is too early to know whether the new rules are enforced, and Ethiopian workers carry that risk.

For some countries, remittances bring in more money than most exports. In 2024 Egypt received $29.6 billion, Nigeria $22.1 billion and Morocco $12.5 billion. In The Gambia, remittances equal 22% of the economy. Nigeria, Senegal and The Gambia are all under partial US entry bans. Fewer of their citizens can now travel to the United States to study, which is one of the routes that later brings money home.

Hundreds of millions of young people will join Africa's workforce whether or not jobs exist for them. With so few wage jobs, the key question is how to make small informal firms more productive. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is the biggest tool governments have for this. The World Bank estimates that it could raise African incomes by $450 billion by 2035. It could lift 30 million people out of extreme poverty and raise wages for unskilled workers by 10.3%. Cutting tariffs alone would add only 0.2% to incomes. Most of the gain, $292 billion, depends on faster customs and less paperwork at borders. Cheaper payments between African countries and common product standards would add to it. African governments control all of these reforms and can start them now.

Counting workers who leave as new jobs lets a government report jobs it has not created at home. Countries that receive workers now decide who comes, on what visa and with what deposit. African governments negotiate labour agreements one at a time, with no shared minimum on wages, recruitment fees or protection. Each country then competes with its neighbours to supply workers on the weakest terms. A common African minimum, agreed through the regional groups, would give every sending country a stronger hand.

Generative AI, the kind of software that writes text and computer code, could affect 11% of jobs in low-income countries, against 34% in high-income countries. A joint paper by the ILO and the World Bank warns that job losses could still come fast. Workers whose tasks software can do are often already online, even in poor countries. Workers who could gain from AI often lack reliable internet. In Africa, the first jobs affected will be office and outsourcing work, which many educated young people have been aiming for. In June the ILO adopted the first international treaty on decent work through online platforms. It covers the right to join a union, safe work, data protection and the right to have automated decisions reviewed. African governments that want online work should sign up to it early, because buyers will judge their workers against it.

Remittances are the most reliable money that reaches Africa from outside. Moving senders from cash to transfers paid from a bank account avoids the new US tax and lowers the fee at the same time. The highest charges are on routes inside Africa, where African central banks and African firms set the rules. Those charges are an African policy failure, and African governments can fix them.