Africa’s 84.4% informal employment rate exposes limits of unemployment statistics
Africa’s unemployment rate stood at 6.3 per cent in 2025, but 84.4 per cent of employment was informal, highlighting the limits of using unemployment figures alone to assess labour market conditions, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) has said.
ECA Executive Secretary Claver Gatete said African countries need more comprehensive statistics to capture the realities of employment, including underemployment, working poverty, job quality and access to social protection.
Speaking at the opening of the tenth session of the Statistical Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Gatete said reliable data was essential for governments to make effective public policy and investment decisions.
“When data and statistics are outdated, incomplete or unavailable, governments risk investing in the wrong priorities, overlooking underserved communities and failing to identify opportunities for economic growth,” he said.
The meeting, held jointly with the twelfth meeting of the Regional Committee of the United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management for Africa, brought together statistical and geospatial institutions to discuss how data can better support development across the continent.
Gatete said African statistical offices should publish a broader range of labour market indicators together and improve the comparability of employment data. He also called for statistics to be released in line with national planning and budgeting processes.
Beyond unemployment figures
The ECA chief said the challenge extends beyond employment to poverty measurement, arguing that income-based statistics alone do not capture the multiple disadvantages experienced by households.
He encouraged countries to strengthen the collection of multidimensional poverty data covering health, education and living standards, and to identify where these disadvantages overlap.
Such information can help governments direct investment towards communities facing gaps in schools, healthcare, water, sanitation and other essential services.
Gatete also called on governments to modernise their statistical systems ahead of the 2030 round of population and housing censuses.
He said census data should be connected with national identification systems, civil registration, business registers and geographic address information to give policymakers a more complete picture of their populations.
He warned that census results lose much of their policy value when they are published years after data collection or remain disconnected from other national statistics.
AI and climate risks
Gatete said artificial intelligence, satellite imagery and digital records could improve the timeliness and detail of official statistics, but warned that technologies trained on incomplete or unrepresentative data could produce misleading results and reinforce existing biases.
He urged national statistical offices to establish standards for validating emerging data sources, assessing AI-generated information and protecting confidentiality.
He also called for closer integration of statistical and geospatial information to help governments identify communities exposed to floods and droughts, improve land-use planning and direct climate adaptation investments to areas most in need.
Calls for stronger funding
Gatete said statistical institutions need predictable government funding to produce timely, credible and comprehensive information, including investment in census programmes, modern infrastructure and skilled personnel.
He added that statistical agencies should work more closely with finance ministries and planning authorities to ensure that their data responds to national priorities, including employment, industrialisation and climate resilience.
The ECA, through its African Centre for Statistics, will work with national statistical offices and development partners to promote adequate and sustainable financing for statistical systems, he said.
The Statistical Commission for Africa’s tenth session was held under the theme “Unleashing the Value of Data in Africa: Making Official Statistics a True Mirror of the Continent.”
Delegates were expected to agree on practical commitments to improve census readiness, strengthen the relevance of national statistics, establish safeguards for emerging technologies and improve the integration of statistical and geospatial information.
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