What are the best jobs for my future? What skills do I need to access them? These are perennial questions for many young people, and in this fast-changing world, the answer is more complex than ever. Artificial intelligence and automation, demographic changes, new digital economies and the ever-increasing impacts of climate change are reshaping the future of work in ways that are difficult to predict.
Governments and industries need to rise to the challenge and provide young and older populations across an intersectional spectrum with both adaptable skills and social protections. The implementation of evidence-based policies amid these fast transitions is vital to avoid leaving marginalized groups behind. Women, youth, ethnic and racialized groups already face inequalities in access to skills and employment. Without concerted action to address these inequalities, the future of work can compound the problem.
Tackling this issue is difficult enough for rich countries with well-established labour systems, but much more so for the countries where most of the world’s workers live: the Global South.
“The global discussion on the future of work is biased toward the realities in the Global North,” said Ramiro Albrieu, a lead at Sur Futuro in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Sur Futuro is a research hub at Red Sudamericana de Economía Aplicada, focusing on the future of work. “There is a significant mismatch between this Northern narrative and the actual challenges and opportunities globally.” For the global discourse on the future of work to be effective, it must reflect reality and account for the fact that 85% of the world’s working-age population lives in the Global South, a proportion expected to rise to 90% by 2050, far outstripping projected job growth.
Until recently, Southern-based research in this field had been scattered and often inaccessible to policymakers or the public. But now, researchers like Albrieu have a better understanding of the distinct experiences of specific places, which has proven key to designing appropriate future-fit policies.
For the last several years, Albrieu coordinated Future of Work in the Global South (FOWIGS), an IDRC-funded initiative aimed at filling those knowledge gaps with research grounded in local contexts. Four think tanks in Argentina, Peru and South Africa collaborated to generate policy-relevant evidence, focusing on the opportunities and adverse impacts of technology.
More than 100 researchers generated a diverse array of regional reports, policy briefs and other material, available on the FOWIGS website. In an open-access book, Cracking the Future of Work, 25 researchers explored how automation in the workplace and the new world of work on digital platforms have produced mixed results for workers in the Global South.
In two dozen video dialogues, experts identified five elements they considered essential to understanding the future of work in the Global South: skills, technology, demography, inequality and labour-market institutions. The inclusion of that last element — referring to unions, wage-setting institutions, employment insurance systems and mandatory social benefits — highlights a key difference from the standard Northern-centric focus: While precarious employment is growing around the world, countries in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia report levels of informal employment as high as 80%. Many of these countries have less established labour institutions and social protection systems.
The FOWIGS research notes how uneven digital access increases inequalities, putting technology-driven opportunities such as the platform economy out of reach for members of marginalized groups. There are also privacy concerns for participants on these same platforms. But even if all those concerns were addressed, and even if divides were closed and access to such platforms was universal, FOWIG researchers say pre-existing societal inequalities would still be in play and possibly magnified.
In a roundtable on inequality in Asia, scholars emphasized the need to tackle two major structural factors impeding women’s full economic participation: disproportionate responsibility for unpaid care work and gender-based violence. Separately, women in the platform economy in five Asian countries reported increased pressure to perform household duties while working, as well as risk of harassment and sexual violence. However, they also reported benefits such as flexibility, income, autonomy and cost savings. The IDRC-supported project is one of several that point to the double-edged nature of home-based work.
In higher-paying sectors, women aren’t faring much better. For example, only 2% of women in the labour force in Latin America and the Caribbean work in the science and technology sector, where the best jobs still go to men, prime-age workers and the highly skilled.
This example exposes deep-seated issues of inequality. In general, technological advances cause middle-skilled jobs to decline while low- and high-skilled jobs increase. Researchers in South Africa discovered a disturbing racial twist to this phenomenon. Studying two decades of labour-market changes, they found that Black people and women were more likely to be relegated to lower-skilled jobs during these shifts, while non-Black men moved to higher-skilled ones. The researchers attribute these divergent paths to the enduring impacts of apartheid, in addition to gender biases and an inadequate education system that still fails to prepare most Black students for high-skilled work.
Governments in the Global South recognize the urgency of preparing populations for a work landscape being transformed by climate, technology and demography. Their ambitions to nurture a resilient workforce — by equipping job-seekers with adaptable skills to navigate the turbulence — rely heavily on smart policies and investment.
In Kenya, substantial government funding of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) has seen student enrolment in the sector increase more than sixfold in a decade. An IDRC-supported initiative in this vibrant sphere led to the creation of four innovation hubs connecting Kenyan training institutes with local communities and industry. Students are developing products that are both socially useful and economically viable, such as fuel-efficient stoves and more nutritious flour and animal feed.
“IDRC-funded research has also informed the development of a national quality-assurance framework that is set to improve the quality and relevance of TVET programs across Kenya,” said Paul Okwi, a senior program specialist at IDRC. “This review of TVET programs is helping young people in Kenya to acquire demand-driven, practical skills and industry-specific knowledge, contributing to their academic and professional progression.”
To continue fostering a better understanding of context-specific Southern challenges, IDRC has launched FutureWORKS, a major five-year program building on the earlier efforts to shape a more inclusive future of work.
Regional hubs in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East will drive rigorous research and engage with policymakers on labour-market challenges posed by technology, climate and the energy transition.
“The dynamics and impacts of the future of work vary by region, which is why the initiative is led by hubs that will bring together researchers and decision-makers who understand the local context,” said IDRC senior program specialist Alejandra Vargas Garcia.
“The hubs will work closely with government and business leaders to help shape evidence-based policies that promote inclusive employment, social protection and resilient skills,” she said.
The goal: to ensure that everyone benefits as the future of work evolves in diverse ways across the Global South.
Dive deeper into strategic foresight and how to think differently about the future on our dedicated web page.
FutureWORKS Asia Hub: Lirne Asia
FutureWORKS Middle East and North Africa Hub: American University of Beirut
FutureWORKS East and Southern Africa Hub: University of the Witwatersrand
FutureWORKS West and Central Africa Hub: University of Ghana
FutureWORKS Latin America and Caribbean Hub: Red MERCOSUR de Investigaciones Económicas