In 2017 the Ministerial meeting on Infrastructure in Lomé, Togo requested the African Union Commission (AUC) and AUDA-NEPAD to develop a tool to estimate, integrate and promote job creation through infrastructure development. Thus, the PIDA Job Creation Toolkit will be the continent’s primary tool to estimate, monitor and evaluate the labour market effects of regional infrastructure.

The demonstration of labour market effects helps to raise the political and financial commitment necessary for PIDA project implementation. In terms of the cross-border and large-scale nature of infrastructure projects in Africa, the development of such a consistent and practical methodology is unprecedented. Moreover, PIDA project owners and their partners can use the Toolkit as a policy planning instrument to assess how alternative project designs may impact African job creation and skills development.