No Improvement in the gender pay gap in 2024
Progress stagnates amidst persistent inequalities, with Namibia leading yet women earn 17% less than men
Efforts to close the gender pay gap across the African continent have stalled. The gap widened by six percentage points in the last year due to economic challenges and global unrest. The latest data from the Word Economic Forum (WEF 2024) shows that women in 41 African countries earn, on average, 39% less than men and struggle to receive the same wage for the same job as their male colleagues. The 39% gap is in line with the global average, but while the number of countries and quality of data has improved, the average pay gap in Africa has widened by three percentage points in the last decade.
Understanding the gender pay gap
The gender pay gap measures the difference in earnings between men and women. Closing the gender pay gap is not just a matter of fairness; it is essential for building a more equitable, prosperous, and just society. Pay equality ensures that everyone, regardless of gender, has the opportunity to contribute to and benefit from economic progress, as highlighted by this 2022 article looking at female entrepreneurs in Senegal. Efforts to close the gap are ongoing, though progress is slow. The WEF estimates that it will take another 134 years for women to achieve equality globally.
The gender pay gap is influenced by factors such as education, caring responsibilities and direct or indirect discrimination. Reducing the gender pay gap involves addressing these underlying causes through policies and initiatives to promote equal opportunities in the workplace. Many countries now have laws for gender wage equality but struggle to enforce transparency and consequences for corporations.
How is it measured?
The WEF looks at many indicators. The two most relevant are: “the average estimated earned income” and “wage equality for similar work”. The average estimated income measures the average earnings per $1000 for men and women in each country — this is an unadjusted measurement as it does not consider differences such as education levels, working hours or job roles. The wage equality for similar work assesses whether men and women in the same job role earn a comparable wage and ranks countries by index. A lack of equality in this metric is often a result of discrimination.
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The latest data
The best-performing country in Africa for overall gender equality according to the WEF is Namibia. It entered the global top ten in 2018 and has held on to the eighth spot since 2022. Rwanda, sixth in 2022, has since dropped to 39th in global rankings. This is not due to a large decline in gender equality in Rwanda but rather due to a stagnation in the situation while other nations made improvements.
However, when we look at just the gender pay gap, women in Namibia earn 17% less than men, and it does not fall within the top 5 most equal countries in Africa for this metric but is at the better end of the scale, with women across the continent earning between 5% — 80% less than men. The five countries with the smallest pay gap are: Liberia (5%), Zimbabwe (10%), Tanzania (11%), Burundi (15%) and Kenya (15%). The five countries with the biggest pay gap are Sudan (82%), Algeria (81%), Egypt (79%), Morocco (77%) and Tunisia (65%).
In monetary terms, this translates to women earning thousands of US dollars less per year. For example, Egypt is the African country with the largest gap in absolute monetary value, with women earning on average $16k less than men per year.
Out of the five most equal countries, only Kenya saw improvement in the pay gap over the last year — a marginal gain of 0.5 percentage points, meaning there is on average an $830 difference between men’s and women’s salaries per year. Zimbabwe saw the gap widen by eight percentage points, joining South Africa, Burkina Faso, Liberia and Guinea in the top five countries with the largest negative change.
Women are usually more disproportionately affected in hard economic times and all these countries have experienced major economic headwinds with low employment rates reflecting wider underlying issues such as declining infrastructure (South Africa and Liberia), under-development in rural areas (Guinea, Zimbabwe) and insurgencies (Burkina Faso). The only countries to close the gap by more than one percentage point were Eswatini and Zambia and only five countries overall improved the gap.
Click here to see where your country ranks in terms of pay equality by gender
When looking at wage equality for similar work, we see stagnation and much work to do. Women across Africa are earning less for the same role. Rankings are measured in an index from 0–1 where 1 represents equality. Index scores for the continent range from 0.478 to 0.825, which has not improved over the last ten years. Liberia and Algeria lead the way with index scores of 0.8, and Botswana and Côte d’Ivoire both showed impressive improvements in this area (0.16 and 0.8 points respectively).
However, the average still sits at 0.67, showing that the application of equality-based labour laws still has a long way to go. The WEF shows that while sub-Saharan Africa is the second largest region in terms of equal pay laws, this still only equates to 57% of countries having them. Northern Africa has even fewer countries with pay equality laws:
Closing the gap
The gender pay gap is a symptom of the broader social inequalities women face. Closing the gap requires a holistic approach to addressing issues that hold women back; from education to healthcare, to caring responsibilities, to gender-based discrimination and violence. As such, laws for equal pay must be accompanied by policies that drive equality across these spaces.
These should include:
- Helping women balance motherhood and work with access to childcare resources, generous and equitable parental leave policies for both mothers and fathers and work-life balance with flexible work schedules.
- Keeping women safe at work with inclusive and respectful working cultures that create workplaces free from harassment, discrimination, and microaggressions.
- Providing opportunities for women by ensuring access to education and opportunities for sponsorship, mentoring and professional development. Recognition and advancement-like opportunities for promotion and leadership positions are also key as representation at senior levels helps close the gap.
- Ensuring women’s health needs are met with accessible health care and specific resources that address women’s health concerns and needs, such as on-site lactation centres for nursing mothers.
Only when these challenges are addressed will women be able to thrive as equal members of economies.
This data blog was written by Rhiannon Hanger and copy edited by Kiprotich Koros.
Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest network of civic technology and data journalism labs, with teams in 21 countries. CfA builds digital democracy solutions that give citizens unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions and strengthens civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability. This includes building infrastructure like the continent’s largest open data portals at openAFRICA and sourceAFRICA. CfA incubates initiatives as diverse as the africanDRONE network, the PesaCheck fact-checking initiative, the sensors.AFRICA air quality sensor network, and the research and analysis programme CivicSignal.
CfA also manages the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR), which provides the continent’s best muckraking newsrooms with the newest possible forensic data tools, digital security, and whistleblower encryption to help to improve their ability to tackle crooked politicians, organised crime, and predatory big business. CfA also runs one of Africa’s largest skills development initiatives for digital journalists, and seed funds cross-border collaboration.
