under the EU-ECOWAS funded project “Support to Free Movement of Persons and Migration in West Africa” a project implemented by IOM in collaboration with ILO and ICMPD, the International Labour Office (ILO), in partnership with the ECOWAS Commission, and Senegal’s National Agency for Youth Employment (ANPEJ), hold a technical workshop on strengthening public employment services in the ECOWAS Member States in Dakar, Senegal on February 8-9th, 2016.
The workshop brings together representatives of public employment services, employers’ organizations, trade unions, and private recruitment agencies from across the ECOWAS region. With the support of technical experts from the ILO, France’s Pôle Emploi, and the African Union Commission, participants discuss strategies and tools for providing effective job placement services and information about the labor market in the region.
In a context of increasing concern for unemployment, especially among youth, as well as growing interest in promoting the mobility of workers within the ECOWAS region, employment services can play a major role in matching job seekers with job opportunities, enabling labor markets to function more effectively and enhancing the benefits of labor migration. This can also pave the way for greater cooperation among regional economic communities in Africa on migration governance, in line with the AU-ILO-IOM-EAC Joint Labour Migration Programme.
With these objectives in mind, several West African countries have experimented with the use of a job matching database known as Job Gateway (Accueil Emploi in French) to connect job seekers with national and international employment offers. The database, first developed by the ILO, is currently installed in six countries of the region (Benin, Cape Verde, Ghana, Mali, Mauritania, and Senegal).
During the workshop, participants share their experiences using Job Gateway and have the opportunity to take a study tour of Senegal’s National Agency for Youth Employment to better understand how the tool is used in practice. Based on these experiences, an action plan will be defined for extending Job Gateway to new countries and strengthening public employment services at the regional level