African economies have picked up but structural transformation remains limited. In this setting,
employment opportunities are barely keeping up with rapidly growing labourforces. In lowincome countries, this translates into large and sometimes growing underemployment rather than
open unemployment, as people are simply too poor not to work. The vast majority of the
workforce remains in subsistence agriculture and, increasingly, the urban informal sector, with
very low and uncertain incomes and no access to social insurance programmes. Public sector
jobs have dwindled since the era of structural adjustment in the 1980s and 1990s, and private
formal sector employment growth has been too small and started from too low a base to make a
significant dent in underemployment. With its rapidly growing populations, small enclaves of
relatively well-paying modern sectors, and vast informal economies, Africa resembles the situation described by Arthur Lewis (1954) as ‘unlimited supply of labour’ more so today than at
the time Lewis presented his classic analysis.