Yesterday (April 13, 2023) Economic Policy Research Centre Researchers sat down in a meeting to discuss the proposed National Employment Strategy 2023-2028 and the action plan for 2023-2025. The strategy’s aim is to anchor the employment strategy in Uganda’s Vision 2040 which is necessary to ensure that the strategy’s implementation supports attaining the vision’s aspirations.
Uganda aspires to become an upper-middle-income country by 2040, The aim is to “transform from a peasant society to a modern and prosperous country within 30 years”, starting from 2010. This will entail increasing Uganda’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita from USD 506 in 2010 to USD 9,523 in 2040.
During the meeting, the researchers engaged the lead researchers on the gaps that exist within the strategy and how they would be filled. Uganda’s National Employment Strategy (NES) (2023-2028) has been prepared to diagnose labour market challenges and propose solutions and measures to tackle these challenges. Therefore, the NES aims to align economic development with employment. The strategy integrates economic, sectoral, and labour market policies by developing an action plan that releases Uganda from the jobless growth trap.
This strategy is expected to create more and better employment opportunities for Ugandans, enabling and facilitating a gradual transition from a passive and standalone agenda towards stimulating a transformative and integrated approach, leveraging all instruments to increase the capacity of the economy to create decent jobs.
The strategy aims to increase decent and productive work opportunities through four policy priority pillars. These are strengthening job-rich growth and investment, strengthening education and training systems to meet labour market needs, eliminating barriers to employment of vulnerable groups (women, PWD, youth, refugees, migrants, and long-term unemployed) and strengthening employment and social protection linkages to promote decent work.
The Strategy attempts to set concrete targets to be achieved by 2028, under the four main priority pillars. It also
highlights the seven strategic sectors with the highest potential to generate inclusive growth and employment. A monitoring and evaluation framework and a governance framework have been integrated to measure progress in reaching the targets and facilitate the NES’s coordination and implementation.
The meeting ended with suggestion from the Executive Director on which direction the researchers should take and how to present a better strategy that was non-biased.