The Covid-19 pandemic and its consequent effects have destabilized the employment industry across the world and have fast changed employment trends.

Locally, the scene is likely to be disrupted in multiple ways given the trends seen in the previous year.

As of October 2020, the unemployment rate was at 15 per cent according to the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda’s (NISR) labour force survey, from 22 per cent in May.

With the lockdown slowing down a number of economic sectors, experts say that economic growth and consequent job creation is likely achieved from adjustments of the agriculture sector.

Canisius Bihira, a Rwandan economist, told The New Times that in 2021, the country could create jobs from agriculture outside traditional exports of tea and coffee.

This he noted, will be buoyed by the commencement of trading under the African Continental Free Trade Area and the stability of demand for food in most global markets.

Bihira said that agriculture activities and value addition will guarantee jobs for youth across the country as well as better returns for agriculture exports.

The economist said that from the pandemic’s lessons in 2020, food products have demand across the world even when other commodities do not farewell.

Rwanda’s job creation prospects, experts further argue, could be boosted by the emergence of infrastructure projects as most employ hundreds despite being short term.

Construction was one of the key drivers of recovery with regard to jobs in the second quarter of 2020.

Groupe Duval’s local subsidiary Duval Great Lakes Ltd which is set to commence the construction of a multi-billion mall in Kigali, Inzovu Mall is one of the projects that could create jobs.

Human resources experts said that going by the trends that are spotted on the local scene, there is likely to be an increase in demand in finance and IT sector skills to drive new emerging trends.

Lucy Moindi the Business Accounts Manager at Right Seat, a boutique human resource firm, said that with the upsurge in electronic payments witnessed in 2020, the financial sector is likely to require more technical support and customer success and experienced professionals to ensure their systems and products stay competitive.

Within the IT sector, higher demand for electronic services, she said will require more developers, support and information security talent needs.

"Education, construction, tourism and hospitality sectors may see an uptake leveraging on the consistent safety measures implemented by the government. This spills over to all other sectors, but more especially these as they were vastly affected in 2020,” Moindi said.

Among the job trends likely to be witnessed in 2021 she said include an increase in remote working opportunities for all job levels (Entry, Middle & Senior) with Entry and Middle levels making the highest majority.

"Given that the current learners were forced to experience e-learning from 2020, technical skills in providing services online are becoming more sought after (software support, transcription, virtual administrators, customer support,” she said.

There is also likely to be longer recruitment processes especially for International NGOs, due to fund dependency in all projects run with majority currently advertising vacancies contingent on the availability of funds as a disclaimer.

She added that 2021 is likely to be kind to technical experts and senior-level professionals who have been positioning their expertise online who are likely to have more international opportunities availed to them.

Nicole Dusabe, the Senior Human Resource Project Manager at Job in Rwanda, online recruitment and job advertisement firm, told The New Times that NGOs’ demand for new employees has gone down following the pandemic.

Among the sectors that had a demand for jobs in 2020 and likely to maintain this year, she said, include information technology, agriculture sector, digital marketing and public relations, healthcare as well as energy and utilities

Dusabe said that going forward, some employers are likely to prefer short-term contracts and outsource some services to consultants.

The job market she said is also likely to be characterized by demand in competencies such as critical thinking, active learning, complex problem solving, basic IT skills, stress tolerance and flexibility, self-management skills like resilience and taking initiative.

"The job market is going to be more competitive than before so we should be prepared especially for fresh graduates with no working experience,” she said.

The job creation ambitions, labour unions say, should go beyond numbers to ensure that resultant jobs are quality and characterized by features such as contracts and insurance which continue to lack.

Africain Biraboneye the Secretary-General of the Rwanda Workers’ Trade Union Confederation (CESTRAR) said that based on the 2020 experiences, the best way of securing jobs would be the quick transition from informal to formal for activities such as agriculture, mining and others.

"As you know that category of informal workers suffered a lot due to the lack of savings, no employment contracts, no insurance,” he said.

Biraboneye said that they are also engaging the government to put in place a joint task force and mechanism to monitor the quality of jobs created and not relying on a number of jobs solely when registering new businesses.

"Another aspect is to improve social dialogue between workers and employers to be able to have common understanding and find together solutions of some issues caused by situations like Covid-19,” he added.