Measuring Soft Skills for Economic Empowerment: The ESTEEM Framework in Africa

In a groundbreaking initiative led by the World Bank’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab and Innovations for Poverty Action, a group of international researchers has developed and validated the ESTEEM framework, Effective Socio-emotional skills To gain Economic Empowerment, to measure the role of social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) skills in the economic outcomes of adults across Sub-Saharan Africa. This study, involving adults from six countries, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, the Republic of Congo, Rwanda, South Africa, and Tanzania, sets a new standard for how we understand and measure soft skills in diverse cultural and economic contexts. With assessments conducted in multiple languages, including English, French, Hausa, Swahili, and Yoruba, the work stands out not only for its scale but also for its cultural and linguistic inclusiveness.

Rethinking Soft Skills for the African Labor Market

For decades, soft skills have been heralded as crucial for success in the labor market, but the evidence supporting this has largely relied on tools developed in Western countries for children and adolescents. Such tools fail to capture the realities of adult workers, particularly in non-Western economies where the nature of employment, social interaction, and cultural norms differ significantly. The ESTEEM framework aims to correct this bias by designing 14 context-sensitive SEB skill measures that are directly tied to economic behaviors and outcomes in adults. These skills range from perseverance, emotional regulation, and self-control to collaboration, empathy, and influence, divided along two primary dimensions: awareness versus management, and intrapersonal versus interpersonal. This structure allows for the identification of both agentic "get ahead" skills and communal "get along" skills that may differently influence income and employment, especially for men and women.

A Multistage, Cross-Cultural Validation Process

The research unfolded in four rigorous phases. First, the team conducted a broad literature review, drawing from more than 600 studies in psychology, economics, education, and management to identify promising skill constructs. These were followed by cognitive interviews in Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Tanzania to ensure that the survey items were interpreted as intended across different cultural groups. In the second phase, the survey instruments were piloted through in-person and phone-based methods, incorporating pictorial Likert scales to accommodate low-literacy respondents. Enumerators used tablets to record responses, and materials were translated and back-translated to preserve meaning across languages. The third phase, involving over 1,300 South African participants, focused on content validation. Items were rated for how well they reflected the targeted skill definitions and how distinct they were from overlapping psychological traits like self-esteem or Machiavellianism. Finally, the validated skills were tested against real-world outcomes, employment, and income, across all study countries, with regression models adjusted for age, education, gender, and marital status.

Gendered Skill Returns and National Variations

One of the most revealing insights from the study is the way SEB skills interact with gender to influence labor market outcomes. In Nigeria, for instance, women experienced significantly higher economic returns from communal skills like empathy and active listening. A one-standard-deviation increase in these skills was associated with a 6.3 percentage-point rise in employment and nearly a 29% income boost. In Côte d’Ivoire, communal skills again showed a positive link to income among women, though employment effects were not statistically significant. In contrast, men in the Republic of Congo benefited more from agentic skills like perseverance and initiative, which contributed to both increased employment rates and income levels. These variations underscore the role of cultural and institutional contexts in shaping the economic value of soft skills and validate social role theory’s assertion that gender expectations influence how such skills are rewarded.

Building Better Measures for Policy and Practice

The ESTEEM framework’s greatest contribution may be its attention to psychometric robustness and practical usability. Unlike many earlier tools, which suffered from inconsistent measurement anchors or relied heavily on reverse-coded items that confused respondents, ESTEEM offers streamlined, clear, and culturally validated questions. It also breaks down complex constructs into simpler, actionable components, such as separating listening into active and respectful sub-skills or parsing grit into perseverance and personal initiative. The result is a tool that can be reliably used by employers, educators, and policymakers alike. For workforce development programs and randomized controlled trials, the framework offers a valid way to track the effectiveness of skill-building interventions across both formal and informal labor markets.

Unlocking the Potential of Socio-Emotional Skills

While the study acknowledges some limitations, including its reliance on self-reported income data and its cross-sectional design, it opens important pathways for future research. Longitudinal studies could illuminate how SEB skills evolve over time and contribute to long-term economic mobility. Additionally, comparative studies across other global regions could test the applicability of ESTEEM in non-African settings. For now, the framework provides one of the most nuanced, data-driven approaches to understanding soft skills ever developed in a low- and middle-income context. It offers compelling evidence that SEB skills are not just ancillary to economic success; they are integral. And perhaps most importantly, it makes clear that empowering women through the development of communal skills is not just socially just, it’s economically smart. By elevating how we define, measure, and invest in human capital, the ESTEEM framework is poised to reshape the global conversation on development.