The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of education on urban labour market participation and earnings in seven major West African cities. Our results show that although education does not always guard against unemployment, it does increase individual earnings in Abidjan, Bamako,...

Using comparable data from five West African capitals, we assess the rationale behind development policies targeting high rates of school enrollment through the prism of allocation of labor and earnings effects of skills across the formal and informal sectors, and not working. We find that...