The International Labour Organization (ILO) has commissioned Southern African IDEAS to evaluate the Norad-funded Law-Growth Nexus project.

The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) and the ILO began the Law-Growth Nexus project in March 2008. The project is due to conclude in August 2010. The project was implemented by ILO’s Small Enterprise Programme in Geneva and the sub-regional ILO Offices in Harare, Addis Ababa, Yaoundé and Dakar, and received technical inputs from the ILO’s Social Dialogue Department.

The project has the general goal of promoting better business environments for workers and employers in MSEs (micro and small enterprises). The project aimed at achieving this goal through developing good practice guidelines for labour and labour related laws. More specifically, the project had the goals of:

1. Supporting the ILO’s preparation of training and capacity building tools and guidance on good practices;
2. Informing the ILO’s policy work in this area; and
3. Building the capacity of constituents to participate in policymaking.

Ultimately, by developing good practice guidance on labour law and MSEs, the project aimed at helping governments to develop a legal and regulatory environment conducive both to the formation and growth of enterprises and to the realization of decent work objectives embodied in labour and labour related laws.

The project was implemented in three interrelated but distinct phases. The first phase involved a desk based mapping of labour regulations and related laws, and their coverage and application to MSEs in 12 countries in the sub-Saharan Africa region, namely: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia.

This first mapping filled an identified knowledge gap concerning how labour regulations are formally extended to and (ideally) implemented and enforced in MSEs. The second phase involved the identification and elaboration of six country case studies, namely: Liberia, Kenya, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia. The purpose of this second phase was to illustrate relevant examples or approaches for further analysis, and identifying the costs and benefits of different labour law regimes on the formation and growth of MSEs (from the perspective of both entrepreneurs and those who work in MSEs).

Subsequently and based on the country case studies, tri-partite (plus) country level workshops and policy dialogues were organized in three of the six countries (Kenya, Liberia and Zambia) to increase awareness of the effects of legal structures, laws and specific labour and labour related laws on the development of MSEs. This was expected to lead to increased capacity of governments to effectively implement labour and labour related laws with respect to coverage of MSEs and to the adoption of good practices or policy reforms by governments.

This independent external evaluation is intended with the following three objectives in mind:

1. To assess what has been achieved with the project upon its completion in 2010;
2. To identify lesson learning; and
3. To determine how these results can be used in relevant future project interventions.

The expected outcome is therefore to provide an objective and independent assessment on what has been achieved with the project and to identify lessons from this experience that should be taken into account in future project interventions in relevant subject areas, particularly for another project that will start in the second half of 2010. 

RESOURCES:

Labour and Labour-Related Laws in Micro and Small Enterprises: Innovative Regulatory Approaches

Southern African IDEAS

July 2010