Entering a market where almost everything is informal.

The figure is well known and seldom dwelt on: the World Bank estimates that around 88% of Chadian jobs are informal, in an economy where agriculture accounts for close to 40% of gross domestic product. Across the continent, the institution notes that close to 80% of Africans work informally.

A young person leaving training therefore does not face a labour market in the sense the term carries elsewhere. They face a narrow door, and most of the advice they are given assumes a wide one.

What the figure implies: the record

Informality is not unemployment. It is work — often hard, often long — but without a contract, without contributions, without a record. And without a record, there is no reference to produce five years later.

That is the least discussed consequence: two young people who did the same work for three years will not have the same employability, if one can prove it and the other cannot. The difference lies neither in talent nor in effort. It lies in the record.

The World Bank further notes that the informal economy accounts for more than 70% of total employment in emerging and developing economies, and close to a third of their gross domestic product. This is not a margin of the economy: it is the bulk of it.

What we see in the applications

We run recruitment for our clients. So we read a great many files, and a few observations recur.

Applications look alike. The same CV template circulates, the same phrases, the same list of software mastered. What sets a file apart is almost never one more qualification: it is an experience described precisely — what was done, on what, with what result.

Very few candidates find out anything about the organisation they are writing to. It is the simplest way to stand out, and it costs only time.

Training is not enough without follow-up

On the employers' side, the usual shortcut is to lament the standard of candidates. It is comfortable and unproductive. Skill is built over time, and a three-day session does not achieve it.

Our assignment for the National Food Security Office covers eleven areas of management, renewed year on year over three years. That format was not chosen for its size: over three years you can come back, correct, check what has stuck. Over three days you can only hand out a set of slides. That is the principle behind our training programmes.

The World Bank runs the RELANCE project in Chad and Mauritania, aimed at access to quality education and at outcomes for vulnerable young people. The logic is the same: duration is what makes the difference.