The Future of Work is Local Jobs - A Case Study

In the first episode of this season, we argued that the future of work is a traditional development playbook. Considering the nature of most African markets today - informal, fragmented, subscale - and considering the fact that most employment comes from the agriculture sector, the traditional development playbook says that development starts by increasing the productivity of the informal sector and the agriculture sector, in particular.

These jobs are local jobs. In the context of Africa's rising population, millions of jobs need to be created and millions of local jobs will need to be created. But where are newfound local jobs going to come?

This episode is a case study. We'll explore the decentralized renewable energy sector, or DRE, to see what job creation from a nascent industry could look like.

Where there are sectors that are growing in importance in size, like the clean energy sector, how can African markets take advantage?

2:59 - The seeds of this episode's exploration were planted during a conversation with Shortlist's Paul Breloff. There are significant opportunities for sectors that are actually creating local jobs, and one sector they are bullish on is decentralized renewable energy.

4:28 - We dig into Power for All's Powering Jobs Census, to explore the scope of DRE's local job creation, with its research director, Carolina Pan.

10:51 - Exploring the second-order benefits of DRE, including indirect and induced jobs.

Season 4 of The Flip is sponsored by MFS Africa.

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