Announcing the 2022 Edcent Africa Career Report
By Mike Ikenwa, Edcent CEO
I'm excited to share with you today the Edcent Africa Career Report 2022, a thorough examination of the state of skills in Africa. The Global Skills Report compiles information from over 100 nations and 50,000 students who used Edcent to learn a new skill. The three skill sets driving employment in the digital economy, according to the research, are marketing, business, technology, and data science.
The study for this year emphasizes rankings changes for each nation as well as state-specific information for South Africa and Nigeria, where regional variances are apparent. The 2022 Global Skills Report shows how the need for the digital and human skills required to prosper in the modern economy is increasing as a result of the acceleration of digital transformation, inflation, and international turmoil. Because of the Great Resignation and automation, firms must prioritize obtaining the digital and human skills that are in high demand in order to produce a workforce that is both competitive and egalitarian. As a result, more substantial expenditures in human capital are needed.
Our findings show that these abilities are not equally dispersed, and low-wage employees and students need access to quick, inexpensive, and flexible paths to entry-level digital occupations that set the foundation for a more vibrant and inclusive economy. CareerJunction, a jobs portal, has released its Employment Insights for June 2022, emphasizing the occupations that are now in great demand in Africa.
The insights report takes a more thorough look at the employment sectors in the nation that are actively hiring as well as which positions are most in demand, replacing CareerJunction's previous job supply and demand index. The research is based on extensive data obtained from Saongroup South Africa, where millions of registered job searchers may view job postings from around 5,000 of the continent's leading recruiters (both agencies and businesses). The index indicates that job postings have been trending upward over the past month, with online hiring activity rising by 6% between May 2022 and June 2022. Between June 2021 and June 2022, hiring activity increased by 23% year over year.
Africa country ranking
After the damage caused by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the financial year 2022 will undoubtedly be a period of significant rebound for most African companies. This is evidenced by the turnover of the Algerian giant Sonatrach (#1), which is 2021 soared by 70%. Meanwhile, our latest edition of the Top 9 500 Companies ranking, which focuses on the performance of companies in their financial year 2020, was marked by depression.
The cumulative turnover – $590bn – of this exclusive ranking by The Africa Report represents a decline of 4.8%. In absolute terms, we have to go back to 2016 to find a lower figure, namely $569bn. At that time, there were currency crises in Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa. As for the peak of activity in 2012 – when the 500 companies in the ranking took in a total turnover of $757bn –, it will be many years before this can be matched, and even more so in a period of international tensions created by the conflict in Ukraine.
The drop in activity in this ranking illustrates the impact on Africa of the Covid-19 pandemic. The continent fared better than some other places. For example, the cumulative turnover of the CAC40 companies in France plunged over the same period by 14.7%, according to professional services firm EY. World Trade Organisation director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala tells The Africa Report: “Africa has lost about a decade or more of growth because of this pandemic, so the content has been hit really hard; and, even though the IMF projects a rebound, it’s actually much lower for the continent than for other areas.”
She says: “There are two determinants of this that we found […]: the fiscal space within countries to be able to fight the pandemic, to be able to stimulate demand, stimulate their economies, provide liquidity for their enterprises […], and access to vaccines.” In Africa, almost all economies felt the effects of the pandemic.
The crisis has had a relatively small impact on the health of the population, but prevention and containment measures had, especially in the first half of 2020, a depressive effect on consumption and investment, not to mention the freezing, for a time, of logistics networks. “From March 2020 onwards, suddenly everything in the business world came to a standstill.
The recovery from the summer was slow even if companies were able to adapt quickly enough,” says the head of an investment fund operating in West and North Africa.
Visit here to get the complete report and discover insights specific for a particular country or region.