Nigeria Ranks High as World Bank Lists African Countries With Highest Number of Self-Employed
- The World Bank has ranked Nigeria as the country with the highest number of self-employed people in Africa
- This was revealed in its Africa’s Pulse report, which tracks employment on the continent.
- The World Bank said one out of six people in Africa hold wage or paid employment
Nigeria ranks high in the latest report released by the World Bank on the state of employment globally.
World Bank says Nigeria and other African countries have the highest rates of self-employed and unremunerated family employment worldwide.
Source: Getty Images
One in six people in Africa has paid employment
The bank said in its latest Africa’s Pulse report that the ranking is showing depressed worker productivity and limiting workers’ pay for their skills.
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The World Bank said there is a need for urgent job creation in Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, saying that one in six workers has employment
The report said one in six people on the continent has a paid job, compared to one in two in high-income countries.
Per the report, the lack of quantity leads to poor job quality, as evident in unstable employment, inefficient use of skills, lack of equipment, and bad working conditions.
The majority of Nigerians are self-employed
BusinessDay reports that Nigeria’s labour statistics show the country is a hustle economy as the informal sector accounts for a significant share of employment.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said that most Nigerians are self-employed while a much smaller proportion holds paid employment.
NBS said in its Q4 2022 report that 73.1% of Nigerians worked in their own businesses or farming activities as their primary job.
The report said that the number of employed Nigerians engaged as employees in their primary jobs declined to 11.8% from 13.
The World Bank report said that lacking capital destroys the structural transformation needed for quality jobs.
NBS releases controversial employment figure
Nigeria’s economy has slumped in the last seven years and went into recession twice due to declining oil prices, disturbances caused by the last pandemic, and a lack of reforms.
NBS said Nigeria’s agricultural sector thawed to 1.88% in 2022 from 2.13% in 2021, manufacturing dropped to 2.45% from 3.35%, and trade dropped to 5.08% from 8.62%.
In its last controversial employment report for the last quarter, NBS said that the country’s unemployment rate declined massively to 4.1%
The new unemployment figure represents a massive drop from the unemployment rate of 33.3% reported in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Legit.ng observed that the drop in unemployment figure is not for creating more jobs but for redefinition of unemployment in line with the ILO guideline.
The report also defined the underemployment rate as a share of employed people working less than 40 hours per week and declaring themselves willing and available to work more.
Top 10 African countries with the highest unemployment rates Revealed
Legit.ng reported that in a report from statista.com, South Africa registered the highest unemployment rate in Africa in 2021, with around 34 percent of the country's unemployed labor force.
Djibouti and Eswatini followed, with unemployment reaching roughly 28 percent and 26 percent, respectively.
On the other hand, Niger and Benin had the lowest unemployment rates in Africa.
Source: Legit.ng
