5 November, 2024Discussions at the human rights due diligence and African industrialization conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 23-24 October concluded that workers and human rights were crucial for the continent’s economic development.
The conference was held one month ahead of Africa Industrialization Day, 20 November Africa. Industrialization Week will take place from November 25 to 29 in Kampala, Uganda, themed: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Green Industrialization to Accelerate Africa’s Structural Transformation.
Organized by IndustriALL Sub-Saharan Africa region with support from United Federation of Danish Trade Union 3F, 72 participants from 18 African countries participated and 22 from Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and other African countries joined online. These included participants from ILO Addis Ababa and FNV.
Topics included whether Africa’s developmental agenda is being hampered by a resource curse, and how this curse can be cured. According to United Nations (UN) agencies and experts, Africa’s vast mineral resources fail to develop the continent due to illicit financial flows, conflict minerals, corruption, unfair trade agreements and anti-poor economic policies. Instead, poor working conditions, high unemployment, child labour, environmental degradation, poverty, and inequality continued to prevail.
Also on the agenda: challenges facing trade unions in the changing world of work, including the rise of digital technologies and automation, limited access to reliable internet and the shift from permanent jobs to precarious working conditions.
Speakers emphasized the need to enforce compliance with national labour laws, for multinational corporations sustain international standards for human rights due diligence in their operations, and the potential for the Ethiopian model of industrial parks to stimulate economic development on the continent.
Unions were urged to organize actions for African Industrialization Day and human rights due diligence domestically. There was emphasis that debates were shifting towards binding due diligence laws to ensure multinational corporations’ and local enterprises’ compliance. Participants identified promoting gender-transformative due diligence and ensuring a just transition to renewable energy sources as crucial.
The presenters were drawn from the Confederation of Ethiopian Trade Unions, ITUC-Africa, UNDP Africa, UNECA, FES African Union office, FES Ethiopia, and labour support organizations that included the Sam Tambani Research Institute (SATRI) and the Labour and Economic Research Institute of Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ). Affiliates from Europe, IGBCE and ACV-CSC also participated.
Hod Anyingba, executive director, Africa Labour Research and Education Institute, ITUC-Africa, emphasized that industrialization created jobs, beneficiated raw materials, and increased the resilience of African economies. Other factors that needed attention were the promotion of regional economic integration, boosting human capacity, infrastructural and institutional development, and better trade facilitation.
However, to protect the economies from volatile markets, local content laws can require extractive industries to invest in domestic manufacturing and value-added processes. He cited Nigeria’s content laws in oil and gas sector which created tens of thousands of jobs.
Discussions that followed the conference resolved to develop an African trade union policy perspective on critical transition minerals, and advocate for policies that promoted local beneficiation of critical minerals.
Brendah Phiri-Mundia from regional integration and trade division at the UN Economic Commission for Africa emphasized on the potential of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in promoting regional integration and intra-African trade. Unions’ demands for double transformation in the rules of origin in the textile and garment sector were also discussed.
Victoria de Mello from regional service centre for Africa, UNDP, explained why it is important for trade unions to use strategies and tools that include the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and other AU instruments.
National action plans (NAPs) on business and human rights were identified as important entry points for union engagement with governments, national human rights institutes, and other stakeholders at national level.
Germany’s due diligence legislation and implications for Sub-Saharan Africa were also on the agenda. Susanne Stollreiter, FES Ethiopia representative, said the law had potential to strengthen human and workers’ rights in Africa.
Joel Akhator Odigie, ITUC-Africa general secretary said:
“Trade unions must take a developmental approach when engaging on industrialization and support energy justice especially the full utilization of solar energy.”
Kemal Özkan, IndustriALL assistant general secretary said:
“Inclusiveness in global governance and democratic multilateralism is important for holding multinational corporations accountable for their operations and supply chains in Africa. Further, at regional level, trade unions should engage with the African Union, African Development Bank, and the AfCFTA.”