Knowledge Brief

The transition to a green economy will create many new jobs around the world, including in sub-Saharan Africa. But will women share in these new jobs, and will the economic transformation help them move into higher-paid, more stable jobs that require more education and skills?  This brief presents some insights into the green job opportunities available for women in Sub-Saharan Africa and provides policy recommendations to establish appropriate and enabling policies and programmes to ensure that women get an equitable share of green jobs.

This brief takes a closer look at the relationship between trade, employment and poverty reduction. Rather than being comprehensive on all aspects, it aims to give an evidence-based overview of some circumstances under which trade can lead to employment generation and poverty reduction that is relevant to Sida and its partners.

This technical note provides support for applying a human rights-based approach (HRBA). The note begins with a short introduction to the HRBA and Sida’s PLANET tool. It then explains how human rights norms and standards underpin the thematic area. The note demonstrates how PLANET can guide staff in planning, assessing and monitoring a contribution through a series of guiding questions and examples. Finally, it provides a simple empowerment and capacity development analysis model and a list of additional resources to explore.

This technical brief shares lessons learnt and practical examples from Ecuador, Rwanda, Vietnam and Zambia on how to scale up innovations in education for implementation in different contexts and then sustain the shifts in practice, policy, and each setting structures.

This report highlights how rapid and widespread digitalization has changed the nature of work. The report's findings stress the importance and urgency of addressing the digital skills gap and highlight that digital and social inequalities also affect the available opportunities to develop digital skills.

This Knowledge Brief highlights examples of music enterprises in Africa and the types of opportunities they offer for youth in the broad music ecosystem.  The Brief also suggests some strategies for translating music into economic and social benefits: 1) Access to finance to support music enterprises, 2) Targeted music-friendly policies, 3) Support for networks and enabling infrastructure, 4) Enhanced participation of women and artists from marginalized communities, and 5) Human capital development through skills, training, and innovation.

This brief explores how adopting circular models can create more job opportunities, especially in the services sector. The note shows that the shift to the circular economy has potential for job creation- activities like waste collection, recycling, repair, and remanufacturing are more labour-intensive and could be important segues to job creation. From a skills perspective, the adoption of circular approaches brings to light the importance of skilling, upskilling and digital skill acquisition.

This Knowledge Brief shares lessons on how the World Bank’s Promoting Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Social Protection and Employment Programs project team in Haiti worked to enhance the identification of persons with disabilities and provide them with skills for service sector jobs. The Brief highlights the importance of focusing on demand-driven skills, working with mainstream training providers, and proactive outreach to employers.