Africa Regional Knowledge Sharing Forum – Innovative approaches to addressing informality and promoting transitions towards formality

Africa Regional Knowledge Sharing Forum -

Innovative approaches to addressing informality and promoting transitions towards formality

# Africa Regional Knowledge Sharing Forum – Innovative approaches to addressing informality and promoting transitions towards formality

Date: 15 November 2024

Communiqué

1. We, the participants in the Regional Knowledge Sharing Forum on innovative approaches to addressing informality and promoting transitions towards formality in Africa, have gathered in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire from 13-15th November 2024.

1. We recognize that, in Africa, accelerating progress on the transition to formality is fundamental to addressing the root causes of decent work deficits, poverty, and inequality, to provide an enabling environment for sustainable enterprises and, to respond to the aspiration for social justice, and leaving no one behind.

1. We recall that persisting high levels of informality is a major challenge for social and economic development and, just transition and, one of the barriers to a renewed social contract.

1. We acknowledge that remaining and emerging challenges impacting pathways to formality such as lack of employment opportunities in particular for Africa's youthful population, demographic shifts, crises, technological change and climate change but also new opportunities related to the blue and green economy and the digital revolution.

1. We reaffirm our commitment to the ILO Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work, the Abidjan Declaration for Advancing Social Justice and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

1. Ten years after the adoption of the ILO Recommendation 204, we stress that it is time for reinvigorate political commitment and effective action to promote formalization and prevent informalization in Africa.

1. Recalling that:

(a) The Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy Recommendation, 2015 (No. 204), adopted by the International Labour Conference (ILC) in June 2015, is a landmark international labour standard which provides guiding principles and policy guidelines on how to facilitate the transition from the informal to the formal economy.

(b) Transition to formality is not an end but a means to achieve decent work and social justice.

(c) Most of the women and men enter the informal economy not by choice but as a consequence of a lack of opportunities in the formal economy and in the absence of other means of livelihood.

(d) Structural transformation, policy coherence, coordination among relevant ministries and across different levels of government, social dialogue and a human-centred approach are needed to address formalization.

(e) Policies and initiatives designed to reduce informality must be responsive to socio-economic, cultural, and institutional specific contexts.

Africa Regional Knowledge Sharing Forum - Innovative approaches to addressing informality and promoting transitions towards formality

1. ILO constituents and partners in Africa should work on the following to accelerate and upscale the operationalisation of the Recommendation 204 concerning the transition from the informal to the formal economy by:

# 1 Strengthening political commitment, building trust, and developing and promoting the culture of formality

1.1. Governance, political will and commitment