Conakry has reached a major milestone by validating its National Strategy for the Promotion of Labour-Intensive Public Works (HIMO), designed to accelerate job creation through infrastructure projects and further embed decent work in public policies. The strategy was validated on 29 August 2025 following a workshop bringing together ministries, social partners, and technical and financial partners, under the chairmanship of the Minister of Youth, Mamadou Cellou Baldé.
The strategy is the result of a participatory process launched on 26 November 2024, marked by a national technical validation workshop on 24 February 2025, which helped clarify the vision, strategic pillars and institutional implementation mechanisms. It is based on a diagnostic that identified key challenges: insufficient institutional anchoring, imperfect coordination, skills and wage gaps, uneven compliance with decent work standards, and weak data systems.
In concrete terms, Guinea's roadmap is structured around four strategic pillars:
Strengthening regulatory and institutional frameworks to promote the HIMO approach;
Enhancing the technical and managerial capacities of stakeholders;
Integrating decent work standards, with attention to gender and the environment;
Mobilizing resources and partnerships to design and scale up HIMO projects.
AGETIPE will play a central role in operational coordination, with ongoing technical support from the ILO's HIMO Programme (EIIP), ensuring alignment with international good practices adapted to the local context. This institutionalization aims to integrate HIMO methods into public works programmes, maximize local benefits (jobs, income, skills), and strengthen community ownership of infrastructure.
Beyond engineering works, the strategy is embedded in a framework of converging policies: the National Employment Policy 2024-2030, the local content law, the UN-Government Cooperation Framework 2024-2028, and the Simandou 2040 Programme, with explicit contributions to SDGs 1 (poverty), 8 (decent work and economic growth), 10 (reduced inequalities), and 13 (climate action). Worksites are conceived as spaces for learning, certification and labour market integration, particularly for young people and women.
The stakes are considerable: in a country where youth (aged 15-35) represent nearly 77% of the population and youth unemployment is estimated at around 30%, according to national references cited during the workshop, scaling up HIMO approaches can provide rapid, local and skills-building jobs, while addressing local infrastructure needs (rural roads, water infrastructure, community facilities).
In terms of job quality, the strategy emphasizes compliance with standards (occupational safety and health, wages, social dialogue), gender sensitivity, the use of local materials, and the climate resilience of infrastructure-key factors for the economic, social and environmental sustainability of investments.
The next step is to move from a validated strategy to disciplined implementation, with clear governance, monitoring and evaluation, and financing mechanisms, in order to turn the national HIMO "compass" into measurable results in terms of jobs, skills and resilient infrastructure by 2030. Continued technical support from the ILO and strong stakeholder mobilization will be critical to staying the course.
