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Wages in Africa
Recent trends in average wages, gender pay gaps and wage disparities
This publication depicts the evolution of real average wages since the global economic crisis of 2008, offering insights into the economic context for Africa and also presenting an overview of existing wage disparities within countries, including those related to gender.
This study, which complements the ILO’s Global Wage Report 2018/19, focuses on wage trends in Africa.
It was made possible by work undertaken by the ILO in partnership with national institutes of statistics and research centres to improve the collection of data concerning the wages received by workers within African countries. In particular, two workshops on wage statistics, bringing together representatives of national statistical offices, were held in 2017 and 2018. These have enabled the computation of better estimates on wage trends for the continent. As a result, data on wage trends were collected from 28 countries. Though these data are still short of comprehensive coverage, they cover 84 per cent of wage employees in Africa in 2017.
Moreover, detailed information on the structure of wage employment and wage disparities within ten selected African countries were provided by national household surveys that included questions on wages.
