Africa
In Africa, the Solidarity Center seeks to empower the labor movement and promote worker rights by organizing workers and strengthening their voice at the bargaining table; protecting their rights on the job and ending the scourge of child labor, forced labor and human trafficking. Although many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are seeing tremendous economic growth through oil and mineral exports, the emergence of a textile sector and expanding foreign investment, workers and their families are not sharing in the prosperity. Instead, more than 80 percent of the world’s poorest countries are located in Africa, and of the people living below the poverty level in 2013, more than half were in Africa. Elsewhere, poverty ranges between 4 percent and 14 percent. Approximately one in three people living in sub-Saharan Africa are undernourished. With few formal, full-time jobs available, increasing numbers of workers are turning to the informal economy to support their families. Trade unions across the continent are reaching out to street vendors, domestic workers, agricultural employees and others in the informal economy to provide a collective voice for achieving social benefits, higher wages and job stability. Their efforts recognize that sustainable development and inclusive economic growth are only possible when gender inequity, a key human rights component, is integrated throughout the process. In 2000, the United States passed the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which gives eligible sub-Saharan countries duty-free access to the U.S. market for a variety of products. To qualify, countries must take measures that promote good governance and a fair economic system. These include fundamental labor rights; the rule of law and political pluralism; a system to combat corruption; and economic policies that reduce poverty, increase access to health care and education and expand physical infrastructure. Swaziland lost eligibility for benefits under the AGOA in 2014 because the Swazi government had not demonstrated progress on the protection of internationally recognized worker rights, in particular, protecting freedom of association and the right to form unions. Since AGOA has been in effect, it has increased exports from sub-Saharan Africa but has not spurred broader development or fostered a robust and equitable economic system. AGOA was reauthorized in September 2015.

Media Contact

Kate Conradt
Communications Director
(+1) 202-974 -8369

 

Nigeria Launches Platform Worker Rights Campaign

In Nigeria—where 93 percent of working people toil in the informal economy for low wages, unprotected by labor law and without social services such as pensions and healthcare—app-based workers are fighting for their rights. With Solidarity Center support, today the...

South Africa: Survey Flags Domestic Worker Human Rights Violations, Solutions

“The dignity of people’s very being is at stake,” said IZWI Domestic Worker Alliance’s founder and lead researcher Amy Tekie in opening remarks at a recent webinar focused on a new qualitative survey of human rights violations against live-in domestic workers in South...

Experts: Domestic Violence a Societal Hazard for Informal Workers

Informal workers are routinely excluded from economic and political decision-making, and their work is systematically devalued and made invisible. The COVID-19 pandemic has only intensified these dynamics and has resulted in skyrocketing rates of domestic violence,...
Report Breaks the Silence on GBVH in Nigeria’s World of Work

Report Breaks the Silence on GBVH in Nigeria’s World of Work

A new report by the Nigeria Labor Congress (NLC) and the Solidarity Center, "Breaking the Silence: Gender-Based Violence in Nigeria’s World of Work," finds that gender-based violence and harassment (GVBH) at work is widespread in Nigeria, but goes largely unreported....

‘I Feel Strong When I See Other Women with Us’

‘I Feel Strong When I See Other Women with Us’

Union women are not waiting for their governments to ratify Convention 190, the international treaty that addresses gender-based violence and harassment in the world of work—they are taking action now to ensure workers benefit from the powerful rights it provides,...

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