Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)

The chapter begins with a story about blood diamonds that illustrates how a continent such as Africa, rich and abundant in natural resources, continues to struggle with forms of exploitation, a lack of transparency with global supply chains, often dangerous and largely unregulated labour practices, inequities and widespread poverty. This story captures some of the complexities of informal work, issues of exploitation and extraction and the limits as well as possibilities of a political economy of LLL in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It opens a discussion on the issues for workers in informal employment and the challenges in achieving the goal of creating decent workDecent work for all. In doing this, we describe some of the shifting and complex relationships between the informal and formal economy in SSA that recognise formal workers at the expense of informal workers. We explain how international organisations are working together to develop and implement multiple agendas to create a more prosperous and sustainable Africa. In our provocation we draw on critical analyses of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in SSA to argue for a need to prioritise concepts such as sustainability and just transitions, if we are to counter TVET’s complicity in the Capitalocene and extractivism.