Using an online job platform to understand gender dynamics in the Mozambican informal labour market


Oxford Policy Management Consultant Paul Jasper’s self-professed professional passion is exploring new ways to use data to improve policy making in the Global South. At MERL Tech London in 2016, he presented on two tech-driven initiatives in Mozambique–Muva and Biscate. In his talk, he explains why these are two great examples of how programming and social policy can benefit from innovations and data coming from the tech sector.

Muva is a program that aims at testing new ways of improving women’s access to economic opportunities. It works primarily with women and girls in urban areas of Mozambique and across all sectors of the economy. Its beneficiaries include employees, self employed people, and micro-entrepreneurs. While conducting its work, the program recognized that one key characteristic of the Mozambican economy is that the informal sector is pervasive. Over 90% of new jobs in sub-Saharan Africa were produced in the informal sector. Given this quality, the challenge for organizations like Muva is that because it is an informal sector, there is very little quantitative data about it, and analysts are not quite sure how it works, what dynamics are in operation, or what role gender plays.

This is where UX, a startup based in Maputo, was able to step in. The startup noted that the majority of jobs in informal sector were assigned in old-fashioned way–people put up signs with a telephone number advertising their service. They came up with an USSD-based solution called Biscate. Biscate is a service that allows workers to register on the platform using normal mobile phones (few people have access to smartphones) and set up advertising profiles with educational status and skills. Clients can then check the platform to find people offering a service they need and can leave reviews and ratings about the service they received.

UX has soft-launched the platform and registered 30 thousand workers across the country. Since its launch, Biscate has provided unique data and insights into the labor market and helped close the data and information gap that plagued the informal sector. Muva can use this info to improve women’s access to opportunities. The organizations have partnered and started a pilot with three objectives:

  1. To understand dynamics in the informal labor market.
  2. To test whether Muva’s approaches can be used to help women become more successful in the informal sector.
  3. To influence policy makers that want to develop similar programs by producing valuable and up to date lessons.

See Paul’s presentation below if you’d like to learn more!

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