Africa-Press – Angola. The Minister of Public Administration, Labor and Social Security, Teresa Dias, acknowledged on Wednesday in Dubai that Angola considers informality to be the major challenge in its labor market, in a context marked by strong demographic pressure.
According to the minister, who was speaking at the roundtable on Achievements and Challenges of the Global South, within the framework of the World Summit of Governments, the informality rate in the country is currently 78.6%, which has led the government to develop public policies to reverse this picture.
To this end, the minister said that the European Union (EU) has financed a project, called the Informal Economy Reconversion Program (PREI),aimed at reversing this reality at the national level, and is currently in its second phase and working directly with local administrations.
Regarding demographic pressure, the minister recalled that the country has an estimated population of 36.6 million inhabitants, of which more than half are women, and that, in general, more than 50% of the population is under 15 years old.
This demographic growth is typical of countries in the Global South and has been a concern for these governments in developing policies that can guarantee education, employability, health and social assistance, as well as a vision of sustainability for the future of families, thus reducing extreme poverty, he explained.
Teresa Dias highlighted that, currently, Angola has a population growth rate of 3.3% per year and an overall unemployment rate of 26.9%, while youth unemployment, from 15 to 24 years old, is at 48.7%.
This figure corresponds to an unemployed population of nearly five million and 26 thousand people, with a high incidence in the birth rate set at 41.4%, he specified.
The minister indicated that these figures led to focus on expanding technical and vocational training and job retraining programs to address youth unemployment and informality, which has been the government’s main priority.
