Evaluation Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, 2014, Evaluation of DANIDA Business to Business Programme 2006-2011, Final evaluation, Danida, Copenaghen, Covered countries: Mali, Benin, China, Vietnam, Uganda, Bangladesh.

2.2 DECENT WORK AND ENTERPRISE GROWTH

2.2.2 Formalising work in IE 

Recommendation: 7. When facilitating the establishment of new businesses, identify possibilities for down-stream and up-stream job creation for people dependent on the IE. Integrate consideration of such possibilities during business support mechanisms for new businesses.

References: Evaluation Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, 2014, Evaluation of DANIDA Business to Business Programme 2006-2011, Final evaluation, Danida, Copenaghen, Covered countries: Mali, Benin, China, Vietnam, Uganda, Bangladesh.

Evidence sample: The evaluation highlights how new business partnerships do not only create direct jobs, but often also indirect jobs down-stream (through supplies of raw material, components, services etc.) and up-stream (retail, distribution etc.). In addition to such indirect employment, temporary jobs can also be a significant source of income for example in agro-businesses with varying demands for labour over the year.

Let’s take a look to these real examples:

1) A cotton processing company in Northern Uganda, which claim an outreach to about 35,000 farmers in the Gulu district, providing these farmers with an outlet for farm products such as cotton, in addition to temporary employment of several hundred persons in the cotton processing firm.

2) Several B2B collaborations in agriculture that export different products to Den- mark (dried fruits, vegetables, coffee, tea, etc.) and get the produce from contracted out-growers. These may vary from a handful to several hundred in each case.

3) A cold chain project in Uganda providing a missing link in the value chain with impact on farmers and food distributors in Uganda as well as in neighbouring countries, in addition to temporary employment in the local firm.

4) A B2B project in Bolivia involved in creating new export markets for llama wool. The company might potentially have significant spin-off effects in terms of jobs and better earnings for llama keepers in the country.

5) The B2B has supported several joint ventures in Bangladesh that deliver improved trawls, and also whole trawlers, to domestic fishing companies. While employment aboard these trawlers cannot be directly attributed to the B2B, the programme has at least contributed to significant indirect employment, possibly in the range of 1,000-2,000 jobs.

6) In South Africa a Danish innovative company have invested heavily in setting up a JV with a local company for the production of insulation material for houses made of waste newspapers. Besides the skilled jobs that will be established in the factories approximately 200 people will be needed to collect newspaper for the production.

It is clear that if temporary jobs and indirectly created jobs would be added to the estimate of total jobs created, the cost per job would be substantially reduced.

Recommendation: 9. Note that business development projects can be more or less beneficial to the creation of formal employment of people dependent on the IE depending on the type of enterprise and the level of technology to be used. Where modern technology is introduced it may reduce employment among IE workers.

References: Evaluation Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, 2014, Evaluation of DANIDA Business to Business Programme 2006-2011, Final evaluation, Danida, Copenaghen, Covered countries: Mali, Benin, China, Vietnam, Uganda, Bangladesh.

Evidence sample: According to the evaluation, the employment factor depends to a large extent on the type of enterprises the programme supports.

Thus, some partnerships which are doing financially well have meagre employment effects. For example, a partnership between a large Danish company with global presence in medical equipment in partnership with a distributor of medical supplies in Uganda is doing well financially, but the project has created one local job.

Employment might also suffer due to the B2B Programme even if the partnership is functioning well. The collaboration between two manufacturers of signs in Uganda had an indirect impact on the latter by reducing its labour force from about 80 prior to the collaboration to currently 40, mainly due to productivity increase and reduction of unnecessary labour, on the advice by the Danish partner.

As the evaluation team underlines, the Danida Neighbourhood Programme interventions have focused on production increases through acquisition of new and more modern technical equipment at the farm sites. This, combined with the fact that the vast majority of the farms in the neighbourhood countries are small in size and with little tradition of employing people from outside the family unit, is generating relatively few new jobs in the short to medium term.