Youth Labor Market Survey in three states of Northern Sudan

Joint Programme (JP) Creating Opportunities for Youth Employment in South Sudan (YEP)

Description

Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in 2005, provided an enabling environment for the return of more than four million displaced people. Yet poverty and unemployment remain high, particularly in the southern areas devastated by the 21-year civil war. The Joint Programme’s goal was to improve job prospects for youth, particularly returnees and demobilized soldiers, through skills development, the creation of employment opportunities and ensuring that job creation is integrated in national development policies.

The programme applied an area-based approach, targeting priority states to help maximize the impact of the initiatives by:

  • Mainstreaming employment creation into national development frameworks;
  • Promoting policies and measures to help young returnees enter and remain in the labor market; and
  • Developing and implementing innovative interventions to create concrete employment and training opportunities in the three target states (South Kordofan, North Kordofan and Blue Nile).

One of the main achievements of the YEP programme is:

A Labor Market Study for South Kordofan, North Kordofan and Blue Nile States was completed, presenting analysis of strategic economic sub-sectors, labor force supply and demand and opportunities for youth self-employment in the three states.

    This overall objective of the study is to undertake a diagnosis of the labor youth market in North Kordofan, South and Blue Nile States with particular attention to migrant youth, including returnees, and demobilized soldiers.

    The project also aims at assess the labor market capacity needs, identify the main problems related to youth employment and explain strategies to be adopted in order to enhance youth access to employment and reduce youth poverty.

    In its ongoing efforts to help mainstream youth employment in national development frameworks and create employment opportunities as part of the Joint Programme (FAO, ILO, IOM, UNAIDS, UNDP, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF, UNIDO, UNOPS, UNV), UNDP Sudan in the North led this study.

    YEP targets six priority states, including the northern states of North and South Kordofan and Blue Nile, and three states in the South. As a participant in this Joint Programme, the UNDP undertook  interventions to complement the JP’s national efforts, the first of which was the current effort to conduct a qualitative youth employment labor market supply and demand analysis in the three target states in Northern Sudan.

    The aim of this survey was to  provide information about the needs of the existing and growing economic sub sectors present in each State, determine the skills that youth have or need to acquire in order to become competitively employable, identify the main youth employment problems to be tackled, and to identify livelihood constraints, opportunities, priorities, and options/potentials for migrant Youth in the three Northern states.

    This created a base picture on the needs of economically vulnerable youth communities in the north and provided a basis for the programming of all eleven participating agencies in the six target states and beyond.

    To sum it up, the overall objective is:

    • To undertake a diagnosis of the labor youth market in North Kordofan, South and Blue Nile States with particular attention to migrant youth, including returnees and demobilized soldiers. 

    The specific objectives are:

    • Provide an overview of the general labor market based on the implicit knowledge of the key local and national actors’ in the target states with regards to employment and self-employment
    • Assess the labor market capacity needs and suggest a possible revision of existing youth training curricula including the introduction of new training and technical assistance models.
    • Provide detailed information on and analysis of the following main indicators of the youth labor market: population/demographic trends; education trends; labor force (youth participation; youth employment and unemployment trends, employment by contract type, informal unemployment, etc.); inactivity; and wages and working conditions.
    • Identify the main problems related to youth employment, taking into consideration: the economic and institutional environment for job creation; nature of jobs available for youth; real and perceived employer constraints to hiring youth; current gaps in the local market in order to determine demands for certain professions for which youth can be trained; labor market gender-based discrimination and inequality. 
    • Explain strategies to be adopted in order to enhance youth access to employment and reduce youth poverty. Determine areas of training interest and opportunities, and make recommendations to strengthen market-led professional training and employment promotion services. 

    Services

    Situation Analysis

    • Description of the macroeconomic situation and environment of the youth labor market in the three states
    • Data Collection (Focus Group Discussions and in-depth interviews) and literature review

    Gap Analysis: Supply-Side Survey (SSS) & Demand-Side Survey (DSS)

    • An assessment of the gaps between the demand and supply markets

    SWOT Analysis & Profiling Workshops

    • A mapping of opportunities for employment or self-employment in the three states