From CNBC Africa

Africa is the world’s second fastest growing region around 90 million of its households have joined the world’s consuming classes.

According to a Mckinsey Global Institute report, Africa at work: Job creation and inclusive growth, the continent must create wage-paying jobs more quickly to sustain these successes and ensure that growth benefits the majority of its people.

In a 2011 news story, Business Week reported, “More than 200 million people globally are out of work, a record high, as almost two-thirds of advanced economies and half of developing countries are experiencing a slowdown in employment growth”.

“First of all, unemployment is a world-wide problem. It is a problem in Europe. In Spain and Italy it’s a problem, so it is not just an African problem,” Nicholas Okoye, President/CEO Anabel Group told ABN Digital.

Okoye believes that the main solution to unemployment in Africa is entrepreneurship especially as it enables job creation get to the grassroots.

“Not everybody can work in the big industries, for example, some people can be vulcanizers, some people can be plumbers, it’s still a job.”

Despite the creation of 37 million new and stable wage-paying jobs over the past decade, only 28 percent of Africa’s labour force holds such positions. Instead, some 63 per cent of the total labour force engages in some form of self-employment or “vulnerable” employment, such as subsistence farming or urban street hawking.

At last year’s Africa industrialization day which highlighted the crucial role of job creation and entrepreneurship in eradicating poverty, the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon said that accelerating industrialization in Africa required a focus on Job creation and entrepreneurship.

Written by Dara Rhodes/Read more at CNBC Africa