Wage Dynamics in Africa

This book provides an overview of wage issues in Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa. It examines the evolution and distribution of wages, the income inequalities, the determinants of wages and their causal links, as well as gender issues.

14 chapters dissect the complexity of labour markets in sub-Saharan Africa (Senegal, Mauritania, Nigeria, Cameroon, Nigeria, Kenya, Sudan, Ethiopia, South Africa) and in North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt). These African labour markets share some specific characteristics: only 27% of workers are employees and two-thirds of them work in the informal economy. Wage growth in Africa has been slow since the 1990s, with a few exceptions such as Mauritius. Analysing labour issues in such a wide range of countries confirmed in particular two points: the positive correlation between wage employment growth and GDP and the porosity of the boundary between formal and informal work.

Michel-Pierre Chélini, Emeritus Professor of Economic History at the University of Artois (Arras, France) specializes in the history of prices, inflation, wages and household purchasing power in European and global economies since 1950. He has recently published a history of wages in France, entitled Histoire des salaires en France 1944-1967, Berne, Peter Lang, 2021.

Eveline Baumann, CESSMA-Université Paris Cité. Field research in sub-Saharan Africa and the post-Soviet space. Among her publications: Sénégal. Le travail dans tous ses états (Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2016) and, as a co-editor, L’emploi à l’épreuve de ses marges, Revue française de socio-économie (2016).

Philippe Adair, is Emeritus Professor of Economics and an ERUDITE research fellow at University Paris-Est Créteil (France). He specialises in Labour Economics (the informal economy) and Financial Economics (small business funding including microfinance). He records over 150 publications. He is the Chief Editor of Maghreb-Machrek and Maghreb-Mashreq International journals and an Editorial Board member of Mondes en Développement journal (France).