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🚁 Heli view: Solar will dominate green jobs in Africa
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Investment in climate-friendly business sectors will boost formal employment in Africa by several percentage points this decade.
Up to 3.3 million new green jobs are forecast across Africa by 2030.
All formal employment on the continent currently amounts to about 70 million.
The near-term weight and human impact of the green economy is hard to miss.
Our source: This is the conclusion of a new report called “Forecasting Green Jobs in Africa”, published today.
It was led by Shortlist, the talent advisory firm, staffed by BCG, the consultancy, and funded by FSD Africa, the UK government offshoot.
Until now, no study had rigorously estimated the likely number of jobs in Africa’s green economy.
Guesses were ultra long-term, focused on particular sub-sectors and usually quite fuzzy.
Sector leads: The new study concludes that the main job growth is in five business areas:
Energy and power
Mobility and transportation
Agriculture and nature
Construction and real estate
Manufacturing and materials
The knock-out: Most surprising among the conclusions is the coming dominance of the solar sector.
Up to 1.7 million new jobs, or 57% of the total, are connected to sun-powered energy.
Power law: The energy sector altogether is said to generate up to 2 million jobs, or 70% of the total.
In addition to the 1.7 million solar jobs, power transmission and distribution will create up to 197,000 new jobs, or 6% of the total.
Why sunshine: The dominance of solar is explained by four factors.
General energy poverty is one of Africa’s most pressing problems.
Solar power is universally accessible with short deployment cycles.
Panel installation is always local and requires substantial labour.
Solar is the only renewable that scales up to grid level and down to household level.
Second fiddle: The other major employment generator is agriculture and nature-related work. The total new jobs estimate is up to 700,000, or 25% of the total. This includes:
Climate-smart agriculture technology for up to 377,000 jobs, or 13%.
Aquaculture and poultry up to 189,000.
Ecosystem and nature-based solutions up to 117,000.
The underpinnings: When you read about African development, four things always come up – and here too they are relevant. New green job growth depends on:
Better policies
Better infrastructure
More capital
More skilling
Skill sets: The need for qualifications is clustered at both ends of the spectrum.
Two fifths of new jobs require vocational or academic training
Another two fifths are in casual labour, sales and customer care roles
And one fifth of jobs sit in a middling general and administrative layer
Job locations: Employment will be spread across the continent. But five big countries together make up more than 20% of the growth.
South Africa due to its existing development level
Kenya given its advancement in solar and other renewables
Nigeria with its high population growth projections
DR Congo and Ethiopia with strong hydropower
Solar locations: Based on current investment trends, Egypt, Morocco and Namibia have extra high potential for installed solar capacity.
Around 40% of the solar jobs will go to unskilled labourers and sales agents.
They may not all enjoy great stability of employment as contract workers.
The kicker: The report only counts direct jobs. But one could consider indirect ones too – think farmers planting trees for carbon credits, taxi drivers riding e-bikes or small retailers staying open later with solar lights.
With these included, some experts project green jobs numbers in Africa of up to 100 million by 2050.
Paul Breloff, CEO of Shortlist, said: “Now policymakers, funders and workforce developers need to step up to meet this near-term demand with effective training, apprenticeships and skill matching, in hope of achieving Africa’s green promise.”