While Africa has the potential for generating jobs, its productivity growth remains low compared with that of Asia, according to the report Assessing Progress in Africa toward the Millennium Development Goals, 2012. North Africa’s labor productivity growth is expected to fall in 2012 and 2013, largely owing to political upheavals, but it is set to rise in the medium term. In Sub-Saharan Africa, labor productivity growth decelerated in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and is expected to decline slightly over the long term, predicated on governments’ increased creation of short-term, low-skilled jobs to diffuse tensions that may arise from high youth unemployment rates, the MDG report says.
