A Systemic Approach to Decent Work and Labour Rights in Southern Africa’s Construction Sector: Building a pathway to improved working conditions for youth and the working poor

The sub-regional project “A Systemic Approach to Decent Work and Labour Rights in Southern Africa’s Construction Sector: Building a pathway to improved working conditions for youth and the working poor” aims to promote decent working conditions and labour rights for young and vulnerable women and men in the construction sector in the Southern Africa Development Community. Despite the exponential growth in the construction sector in Southern Africa and the consequent creation of new job opportunities, working conditions are characterised by poor labour rights and decent work deficits for the majority of the sectors’ workers. Poorer and low-skilled workers often have temporary, high-risk, physically demanding and poorly paid jobs on construction sites, and young employees in general and women are often worse off. It is often the sector with the most severe and fatal workplace accidents, and, apart from agriculture, it has the highest percentage of informal worker lacking social protection measures. In consideration of the severity, complexity, and systemic nature of decent work deficits of the sector’s poor labour rights, the project adopts a market system development approach to address them in a way that sustainably benefit the target groups and that can reach scale. The project does so by working with key project partners, including the South African Development Community (SADC), regional and national employers’ associations and trade unions, SADC member government bodies and the private sector at both sub-regional level (Outcome 1) and at country level (Outcome 2). At the sub-regional level, the project supports the SADC secretariat to advocate for scaling-up systemic interventions and inform effective policy change across SADC member states. At the country level - in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique - the project targets key systemic constraints in the national construction sectors, which keep most construction workers locked in precarious work, often informal. After the inception phase where systemic labour rights challenges and opportunities in the construction sector are analysed and relevant relationships with key stakeholders are established, the project trials a portfolio of interventions to create sustainable and systemic change toward improving labour rights in the construction sector for the poor, young women, and young men. Interventions are designed in a way that incentivise market actors to carry forward the work after the funding has ceased.

Project symbol

RAF/21/14/SWE

Admin unit

DWT/CO-Pretoria

Start date

01/05/2022

End date

31/12/2025

Total allocation

4859359

Total expenditure

Status

Active

4333535

Development Partners

Sweden, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency

Country/Countries

South Africa
Mozambique
Zimbabwe

Outcomes

Outcome 4: Sustainable enterprises for inclusive growth and decent work