Oral Bac 2012 G1-G2
    
The first point to note about employment is that its meaning is not restricted to wage-earning jobs in the formal sector, but also covers peasant farming, which employs over three quarters of the labour in most African countries, and a large group of workers in the so-called "informal" sector. This sector embraces a wide range of petty traders and small-scale entrepreneurs such as shee-shine boys, carpenters, tailors and taxi drivers.

Many of them are self-employed though some work for a person who organizes the enterprise. Because the activities of informal sector workers are not always strictly legal, specially since a large number do not pay tax, workers often avoid being counted and it is difficult to accurately assess their number. However, in all African countries, this sector is important: according to one survey in Kenya, for example, it accounted for nearly 40 per cent of adult non-agricultural employment.

The nature of unemployment is more complex and has several different forms. A person is usually described as unemployed when he a she is actively seeking work but is unable to find any. However, because it is rare for a person to be completely idle, many people are considered underemployed rather than unemployed underemployment also takes several forms and may be defined either in terms of output or in terms of time spent working.

From Peter B. Clarke, Education and Society in Africa