The employment challenges of persons with disabilities in Africa.

Details

Supervisors

Jammaers, Eline

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences de gestion, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

Increase in productivity are some of the proven benefits for companies with a diversified workforce. A diverse workforce is a workforce that is composed of people who are different in age, gender, race, ethnic minority and groups like persons with a disability (PWD). As a minority group, PWD have been discriminated against on the global labor market for a long time. According to estimation, Africa is home to some 80 million PWD. This number is expected to increase as the population ages. The majority of PWD are trapped in poverty regardless of their skills because employers are influenced by negative attitudes when making decisions in the process of recruitment. Religious, traditional, and cultural believes inspire a stereotypical wat of thinking which dominates in Africans and considers PWD either ‘objects of mercy’ or ‘punishment from gods’. Another spiritually inspired stereotypical belief relates people with Albinism, whose body parts are believed to have healing power. Also, many African employers are ignorant towards the rights of PWD and can only employ them if they are either family members or if there are incentives offered to them by the government. Many of these employers cannot distinguish capacity from disability and are unknowledgeable about the laws protecting PWD (e.g., employment quotas). Although African governments are the biggest employers of PWD, they too have failed to implement and monitor the rights of PWD as per their constitution. Some of the barriers to employment faced by PWD in Africa are legislations on disability which lacks enforcement by governments, lack of education, lack of accessibility, poverty, attitude and discrimination. Change of attitudes towards PWD, strict monitoring of the rights of PWD (especially employment quotas), good corporate practices, access to education, replacing begging with an entrepreneurship culture in the community of persons with disability, accessible environments and recruitment agencies for PWD are some of the recommendations that will see an increase in the number of employments for PWD.