Mozambique is experiencing significant population growth, increasing the number of youth in
the labor market. The surge of the raw number of individuals, particularly young people, opens
both challenges and opportunities: challenges, because of the need to create sufficient jobs to
employ new entrants; opportunities, because if well managed, the country will benefit from a
young, dynamic labor market where innovations and creative activities serve as an engine of
growth, driving up per capita income and standards of living.
Although most of the labor force is engaged in the labor market activities and the official
unemployment rates are low, in part due to outstanding growth over the past couple of decades,
the quality of jobs has been disappointing. Many of the jobs created have been in subsistence
agriculture, which generates low earnings. Many individuals are under-employed, and unable to
provide sufficient earnings to lift workers and their families out of poverty. The movements from
agriculture into industry and services, and from non-wage to wage employment, have been very
slow.
In order for workers to access better earning opportunities, policy efforts to facilitate the
creation of more and better jobs, and to improve the quality of labor, are critical. There is a
demonstrated need for sound macroeconomic and fiscal policies conducive to private-sector job
creation, and education and training policies to improve the skill level of workers- current and
future. This note focuses on policies relating to skills and quality of labor, based on a labor
market analysis in Mozambique.
Low levels of education and a lack of skills among the work force comprise the main issues
associated with poor labor market performance. Despite major progress in access to primary
schooling, three quarters of the workforce have not completed primary education. The retention
rate is low, and drop-outs are prevalent, across all education levels. Poor quality of education,
opportunity costs of schooling, and delayed entry to school and repetition in part explain the low
levels of education in Mozambique. Compounding matters, Technical and Vocational Education
and Training (TVET) has been limited in availability and of poor quality.
This note recommends four areas of interventions in the skills agenda that can be emphasized
and implemented in the relatively short term. First, policies which increase the completion rates
and the quality of primary education are needed. While Mozambique has made a substantial
progress in an expansion of primary education through supply side reforms involving increases
in school infrastructure and removal of school fees, issues of high drop-out and poor learning
still remain. This is largely due to demand side barriers to school attendance. Thus, demand side
policy measures including cash transfers, parental involvement, and the dissemination of
information on returns to schooling that have proven effective from international experiences
need to be explored in Mozambique.