 Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. I hope everyone can hear me. Time is money for everyone, so I suggest to start on time. Welcome to all the participants. My name is Davy Mas, working for the Chamber of Commerce in West Flanders and your moderator of today. We have the pleasure to welcome more than 25 private companies of which 25% are within the IT sector and the telecommunications sector. 15% around 15% provide business and financial services and more than 20% are in the construction or machinery sector. So a diverse public today. The objective of our meeting today is to present the key objectives of the match projects and to explore how companies can to relaunch their economic activities despite a bleak economic context. Recruiting the right sets of skills is fully part of the solution. More than ever, digitalization and new technologies are central to rapid economic growth and to organize work more efficiently. Activating a skill in the current Belgian population will be a key step, but will certainly no longer be sufficient for our economy to run at maximum speed in the medium term. We need to broaden our horizon and explore ways to employ qualified talents from non-European countries. As you might be aware, the match project has been developed by the ION and the National Organization of Migration, which is an UN agency and the program is funded by the European Commission. ION and its partners launched the match project in January 2020. And here in Belgium, the program is implemented by three other partners, VOCA, which I'm from, Agoria and VDRB. The project aims at enabling companies to fill their manpower gas by recruiting highly skilled talents from Nigeria and Senegal. Here we see the agenda for today. First, we will introduce the webinar by a presentation from our colleague Hendrik de Monk from VDRB. He will highlight the key features of the Belgian labor market and present us the risks and opportunities in a post-Covid crisis. Afterwards, you're in France from Agoria. We'll look at the impact of digitalization and the current skills gap in Belgium. And this session will be followed by a detailed presentation by Rob de Lobel, head of the unit at ION, explaining how the match project can be a solution to the skills gap and help companies to be ahead of the game. We also hear Mr. Cedric Filet, the CEO of Aldelia, and he will focus on how to achieve high quality recruitment in Nigeria and Senegal for a wide diversity of profiles and talk you through the possibility of distance working arrangements. So if there are any questions during the presentation, please do not hesitate to ask them in the general chat. We will follow up on them and answer them accordingly. But I suggest that we will start now and I'm happy to give the floor to Henrik for his presentation. Thank you, Davy. You can go to the slide. I'm Henrik from VDRB. I'm going to tell you a little bit about labor market shortages in Flanders and Belgium. Can you mute yourself, maybe? I think, thank you very much. So first of all, I want to show you the evolution of the available job seekers per open vacancies we have in Flanders. If we look to the last years, we see a strong decline in the amount of job seekers that are available per open vacancy. Last year there were less than four job seekers per open vacancy. That's low. And if you know that there are big differences between professions, there are professions that have more than 100 job seekers per open vacancy in comparisons with jobs that are less than one person job seeker per open vacancy. Yearly, we make a list. We do an analysis of the shortage occupations with VDRB. And if we look to them, then in 2020, we see that 120 of the 186 shortage occupations were for STEM profiles. Yes, thank you. Yeah, you can go further. So if we see eight out of ten of the top ten of shortage occupations were STEM professions. We see the same in 2019 and the same in 2018. A lot of the professions where our structural shortage occupations are in the STEM region, the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. For example, I'm going to show you some professions in IT. If we go further and we look to the IT, we see in IT a lot of profession bottleneck professions. And we see that all of them, yes, are quantitative shortage occupation. That means that there are not enough people to apply for the job available with companies. And next to it is not only even if there are job seekers, a lot of them don't have the right competencies to fulfill these jobs. And if we go back in the studies lost the past years, 2019, 2018, and I could go further, yes, in time, these professions are structural bottleneck professions. Every year, they are on that list of shortage occupations in Flanders. And we see the same in Brussels or Wallonia. These IT professions are structural bottleneck professions. And even if we look further abroad to the countries next to us, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, these professions are really structural. It's a structural problem to find the right people for these kind of jobs. And I could make the same slide for some jobs in constructions in the industry. We have a set of jobs that are year after year that are problems to find the right people for these jobs. There's nothing you can go through. You can go through the next slide. Now we have an impact, we have a crisis that we've never seen before. And of course it has an impact on the labour market. If we see on the job seekers, the blue line is the evolution of the job seekers. The red line is the prognosis we made in January, what would be the expected evolution of job seekers. The blue line from March and especially April and May, we see a strong increase in the amount of job seekers we have at the moment. And that is before the next one. We will see the further increase with young people that leave the educational system and enter the labour market. Also on the vacancies, yes, also on the vacancies we see a strong impact. If we compare the last three months, March, April and May from this year 2020 in red against the last year 2019, then we see a strong decline of amount of recede vacancies that we have. So the crisis had a direct impact on our labour markets. But if we're going to look a little bit further on the next years, the prognosis they make, yes, Nelson, then we'll see that the next years, this year and next year, there will be a massive jobs loss. Around 100,000 jobs are expected to be lost. And of course the employment rate will be increased the next two years. But if we go a little bit further, then we'll see from 2022 already that there is again an increase in jobs. And a decrease in an employment rate. And it's important to know that the jobs that will be lost the next two years will not be the same jobs that will be created after 2021. That will be different jobs. It's not something that we can just put people who now got unemployed in the crisis. Put on the jobs will come in the future. Yes. If we combine this with some demographic trends in Belgium, we'll see that in the next 15 to 20 years, the labour market population will decline. So there are more people leaving the labour market than entering. I think it's around 100 persons that leave the labour market. Only 80 to 82 people will be entering the next 10 to 20 years. To put this in numbers, yes, Nelson, to put this in numbers. From 2018 to 2028, we see that there are 750,000 people who are leaving the labour market. And should be replaced. And this amount is a lot bigger than we've seen the last years. If we take into account that there are some, yes, some other ongoing evolutions like everything like blockchain, big data, machinery, all the digital transformation of the labour market with things like industry 4.0. Yes, Nelson. We can conclude that even the next years, yes, the next years for a lot of professions that were already structural labour market shortage, it will be the same. For example, in IT, in construction, some professions in the industry, it will be not easy for companies to find the right persons. So it is worthwhile already to look further abroad to see where you can find talents to fill these gaps in the Belgian labour market. This is very short, what I wanted to tell from VDRB. So I think a project like match can be available just at this moment. It seems like, okay, with the crisis, there is some extra oxygen to our labour market, but it's very short-term. And I think it's important that we stay on track to look to other talents further abroad, even than Europe. So Davy, back to you. Okay, thank you very much. For this insights, the view of the labour market. I think if there are any questions, there are also Q&A after the three presentations. So go ahead or also put them in the general chat function. Do not hesitate or I could drop just mentioned in the chat. So thank you again, Henrik. And now I'm very pleased to announce Jeroen Fransen. He's a project leader of VDRB Change Project with Ahoria. Since several years, he does research regarding the future of labour market and the impact of digitalisation and technology on our labour market and the skills and everything within this topic. I think Jeroen, you are the right person to ask you what the impact of digitalisation would be on our Belgian labour market. Could you please explain this a little bit more? Okay, thank you Davy for the introduction. Henrik focused on an overview of the actual situation on the Belgian labour market. My work is rather oriented to the next 10 years. The work is called Be the Change and we analysed what the specific impact indeed of digitalisation on Belgian labour market between 2020 and 2030 will look like. And mainly we see two important macroeconomic evolutions. As Henrik also mentioned, one is a quantitative evolution. The other one is a qualitative evolution. Let me start with the quantitative one. We predict and it's not me, it's the National Bank of Belgium and several European sources. We predict that there will be an average annual growth in the next 10 years. An average annual growth of the labour demand of 0.9% every year. All sectors together. So it's an average, there are of course several sectors growing at faster pace. Other sectors perhaps in decline. So that's important to know the average labour market demand will grow by 0.9%. Of course, Covid causes a negative impact on labour market in the next 18 to 24 months. As Henrik also mentioned, but the latest numbers and some deduction exercise state that the average will stay between 0.8% and 0.9% per year. Sectors with high demand are healthcare, education, services and ICT. And it's not specifically the ICT sector as such that will grow at fast pace. But it's the digital experts in ICT sectors, but also in all the other sectors. In the under long run over the next 10 years and Henrik showed a pretty good slide on that. Supply of labour force will be stable. We predict a slight growth for the next 10 years. So I know that Henrik's numbers were negative. But we see a positive impact of migration and lengthening the careers. So the pension age will get higher. But we need to keep in mind for this project that there will be a growth of the demand of 0.9%. And there will only be a growth of the supply of 0.3%. So we're in front of a really important paradigm shift on Belgian labour market. For the first time in our history in two years, let's say the demand for labour will be more important than the supply we have in Arakhan. The second point after the quantitative perspective, there's also qualitative perspective. And that says that the content of every job will change. So digital skills will be key in the development of new roles we will see on the labour market. And those skills will not only be linked to the digital expert, but digital expertise will be needed in every applied or in every field of application. So those are mainly the two macroeconomic evolutions we have to really keep in mind. Thank you. Digitalisation will have a positive impact also on the labour market. I hear you saying it's not because everything will be digitalised that we won't need employees anymore. Let's say that. Maybe another question then. What do you think for the Belgian labour market or labour market, what will be the main challenges and opportunities you see ahead in the next years? We noted four big challenges for Belgian labour market. One specifically related to this project. Let me start with the upskilling exercise. 4.5 million Belgian professionals will need to get their digital skills up to level. And they will need to keep them up to level in the next 10 years. That will be a huge first challenge for Belgian professionals. We have to be honest. We have to tell the brutal job truth for 310,000 people. This upskilling will not be enough. We have to face it. 310,000 people in Belgium will lose their jobs in the next 10 years because they hold a profile that will no longer be in demand. So for this group, we will need to coach them towards another track from a disappearing job towards a job in higher demand. But even if we keep these groups of people relevant and if we keep them on the labour market, even in that situation, we will lack 584,000 people between now and 2030. We will be unable to fulfill the demand of 584,000 jobs. And if the first two strategies or challenges were upskilling and retraining, of course the third one in that regard is activation. We will need to get more people active on Belgian labour market. And we think we will be able to activate more or less 270,000 people between now and 2030. This also might include smart migration methods on the fourth strategy and this might surprise you a little bit. Fourth strategy is that we have to focus on efficiency and implementation of technology to kill even more jobs, not David to kill your job or to kill mine, but to get the dull tasks out of our work, get the repetitive tasks out of our work to get the dangerous tasks out of our work. And we think that from the one side we should activate more or less 270,000 people. From the other side we should avoid the need of plus minus 200,000 people between now and 2030 using specific new technologies. But let's be aware that we will need specialists to implement those new technologies. Most of them are digital technologies. But there are also other drivers of change such as sustainability for instance. The solution is to help more jobs actually to help doing our job in the future. Also economic migration also to the skills gap or the gap that there is to mitigate that gap. We will need economic migration, are you saying? Because the activation of Belgian employees or non-active people nowadays will not be enough. So I think that's a really interesting sentence. So you talked at the last point regarding the sustainability. What do you think how can our labour market become more sustainable by the end of 2030? I think that an increase of diversity and increase of agility will be needed. Of course we should take care of the upskilling of all the professionals and we should take care of the access to Belgian labour market for everyone. Also those with a lower skill level and they could be assisted by technological colleagues in fact. But if I say 270,000 people to be activated. I have to mention that we consider that more or less 10% of them should be invited from other countries to maximise our GDP in fact. So we will need between now and 2030 an extra 30,000 people well skilled people coming from other countries to help us grow our economy in the best possible way. So that's the potential. I have to mention that there will be already calculated an impact of migration of 160,000 workers between now and 2030 just based on the actual measures, on the actual situation, political situation in Europe. So we think we should fasten this up and increase it with more or less 30,000 well skilled young enthusiastic people wanting to help us boost our economy. And yet at the same time keep a good link to their own country to have an added value there. Also because that's an important point of view from a lot of politicians for instance in our country that we should not only go and take away the added value elsewhere there should be a continuous link with the mother country. Thank you very much. I think smart migration actually and unlock some talents in other countries is a very interesting solution to fill in all our vacancies and take some talent from other countries. Thank you very much for these insights. I think we can also read the project you did with Agoria be the change with some interesting facts and figures. I think now it will be also on the screen. So if you go to the link you can find more information if needed there. So thank you again Irun and now I think we can go to Rob and Cedric who will tell us something more regarding that smart migration solutions. Rob is project coordinator with IOM and Cedric is CEO and founder of Aldelia which has great expertise on that smart migration schemes and also great experience in finding those talents for our companies companies which do not find any relevant talent here anymore. So Rob and Cedric the floor is yours. Thank you very much Davey. Thank you for this introduction. Hi everyone. So my name is Rob. I work for the IOM office here at Brussels and I am going to talk to you about indeed this match project and how it connects and answers some of the questions that have been raised by the previous speakers. So the match project is actually a partnership between four countries two countries on the African continent and four EU member states and obviously today we will be focusing on the Belgian case but please note that also Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Italy are part of the project and on the African side we have two countries Senegal and Nigeria Senegal being a French speaking country and Nigeria being an English speaking country. These two African countries they represent a huge pool of qualified talents you have to know that in terms of inhabitants the two of them together I think represent or less half the size of the EU so in terms of quantity of course it's a huge opportunity there obviously not everyone is highly qualified but I just want also to point out that indeed the pools of qualified labor in these countries are quite significant and that's the reason and that's one of the reasons why we have engaged with these two countries in particular. If we move to the next slide I can then show you how this match project actually works a project that is focusing on international recruitment or actual labor migration and you can see here that the first step is indeed that the companies on the EU side in this case on the Belgian side are invited to share with us their open vacancies so vacancies you know that you find difficult to fill vacancies for which you find that there are structurally you know shortages in the labor market feel free to share them with us and we will then move on to the second step and do vacancies with our partners or through our partners in both Senegal and Nigeria. So this will be done with the project partners as you've known BIOM in Australia and as you might know IOM the organization for which I work we have offices also in both these African countries and we have colleagues that will assist us with this work also on the African side. Once we have published the vacancies we move to step three and we will for you for you the company identify the top five matches the top five candidates for each vacancy. So if you say I need an IT specialist in that area we will try to match that request with profiles on the African side we will submit a top five to you and within that top five we will keep an eye on gender balance with a minimum of 30% female candidates that we want to guarantee. After that step four the companies are free of course to finalize the recruitment process. So as a company with that top five you can decide you know whether you want to submit these people to tests specific tests that are maybe part of your HR processes you can decide whether you want to interview these people you can decide whether you do that online whether you do that physically all these things you know are up to you to decide eventually it's up to you also to decide whether you would hire one of these candidates or more than one of these candidates for some of these vacancies that you have shared. Step five IOM will assist you with all of this IOM and the partners in terms of logistic preparation and in terms of preparing the candidates to actually move to Belgium. So we have teams in place we have trainings in place that we also use in other projects where we try to prepare these candidates for the professional environment and the cultural environment here in Belgium and if needed we can assist you and your teams as well with the integration of these people into your companies. Now maybe one word also on this slide with regards to the corona situation so this slide you know shows you know how you can recruit internationally and fill your vacancies you know through the match project. We are of course fully aware that at this stage international mobility is not allowed and therefore within the project we provide also some flexibility with that regard so there is a possibility for instance also to start working with young African talents remotely so that would mean that you could hire them on a temporary basis for instance but for them to work remotely from Senegal or from Nigeria for you as a company here in Belgium or for one of your branches if you would have any back on the African side so there is quite some flexibility there in principle if people come over to Belgium physically then there are a number of rules that are to be applied the new single permit and we will of course also assist you you know with these procedures for the attention of the visa of this permit you know the completing of the documents etc. As a team as a match team we will be available also to assist you with these procedures. We move to the next slide and here you can see what the benefits are at least according to us or the hiring companies. So Nelson I think you can list them immediately so the first one is the cost of this whole process. So international recruitment can be a very very expensive you know thing to do through this project we can minimize those costs The whole story that I just told about we providing you with the top five of candidates is fully free there is no engagement from your side there is no fee for you to pay you can decide that you will hire none of them at the end of the process so it's up to you to decide on these things and the cost for us to come up with this top five for you is zero so that's I think an interesting one obviously we are looking into qualified labor the previous speakers have highlighted it so we are looking into very sophisticated matching systems where we will screen you know CVs on the African side we will of course target specific niche countries campuses tech hubs depending on the vacancy we will look into you know where we can actually find these profiles so yes we can guarantee to some extent that this matching will be adequate as said we want to be as flexible as possible so we want to adapt also to the needs that might exist at the level of other companies so we are flexible on the duration of the job placement but the idea is that the company start with a fixed term contract that could be nine months that could be one year that could be two years really depending on the needs of the company and there is some flexibility with regards these contract durations and the same of course for the distance working arrangements so you can say well maybe we can start working from a distance for the first six months and then we invite the individual to come over physically if that would be allowed under the corona restrictions by then then we will of course help you work on the diversity at the workplace so a lot of companies indeed you know have a policy related to diversity at the workplace and we are happy to assist you with the implementation of that and finally and we think this is an important one as well because we've seen it also in previous similar projects that it's a great opportunity for companies also to discover the potential of Africa hiring you know some of these individuals working with them getting to you know feel and see how qualified they are and probably open doors I think also with regards to the potential of Africa it's important also I think from the perspective of you know being a frontrunner being a pioneer as the previous speaker just highlighted in the next 10 years there will be an increasing demand for labour and so testing these kind of international recruitment schemes I think is an interesting first step you know for opening up to the responsibility of international recruitment so that's definitely also I think the idea here with the match moving on to the next slide what is expected from you as an employer right because of course there's some expectations of us also with regards to the role of the companies so the first one here is related to the employment conditions and that's actually part of the legal framework so the Belgian legal framework foresees that for qualified labour you need indeed to pay the individual markets to form a salary these numbers are you know put on paper so you have no margin there you need to pay these people a decent salary and obviously we would want you to employ the young talents on the basis of the actual vacancy that you shared with us so that's pretty straightforward but still important to mention if we move to the next expectation and Nelson I think you can put them all on the screen we of course expect you to invest in human capital so this is kind of a skills mobility scheme as well so the idea is indeed that you work together with these talented Africans on a number of projects, on a number of topics there will hopefully be a lot of on-the-job training but there could also be alternative training possibilities in the company or outside the company so we invest you to take that seriously and to make sure that these people are indeed you know followed also from a human capital perspective once they are inside the company then we will be monitoring and assisting you as well throughout the whole process so imagine now you would hire someone for one year we will be monitoring that process we will be coming back to you with regular questions how is it going, are you satisfied, are there any problems etc and of course we would expect you to communicate with us so that we can also whenever possible try to find solutions with you and then as already said the soft landing of the migrants in your company that's important one, we can assist you with that so we count on you also to make the integration of these people as soon as possible some of these people will also be invited to work with the diaspora communities that are already in Belgium you might be willing to engage in development projects back in Senegal or Nigeria so there also together with us we will see whether there are some initiatives coming from the workers and how we can support those then the next slide is a slide where our partner Aldelia will say a bit more about the recruitment approach I hand the floor to Cedric Thank you Rob, good afternoon everyone so I will introduce you to Aldelia and how we are working across Africa and especially in Nigeria and Senegal so just to introduce myself in two words I'm Cedric Filet, I'm the founder and CEO of Aldelia we have set up Aldelia two years ago now in Europe and we are operating in 13 countries across Africa both French, English and Portuguese speaking countries so in terms of the selection and how do we recruit the people it's very simple but very well organized and structured with international practice so we use our international database that we have across the continent and we work with the local people, with our local team both in Nigeria, we have been operating in Nigeria since 2009 we just celebrated our 11th anniversary in Nigeria and we have been operating three years in Senegal now so we've got the team locally, we can find the local profile based on the shortage of skills you could be having and we've talked about various sectors, ICT but also healthcare, education construction we can talk about customer service, banking and so on, there is no limitation on shortage of skills unfortunately we do work as well with the Senegalese and Niger and diaspora across West Africa because they could be spread in West Africa so we've got the network with them we talk about the local Senegalese and Nigerian recruitment team, we recruit on a daily basis locally, we use local advertising which is still papers, radios but also obviously social networks which working quite well and we do some local headhunting we've developed a new platform as well which is the only matching platform Pan-African job matching platform on the continent that makes sure that we don't receive thousands of CVs or no inbox where we advertise or when we advertise on social networks, so people will go on the platform they register on the platform and the platform source and through machine learning and artificial intelligence will find you or we select the first candidates and then we will interview so once we have identified these people these talents, we go to the test and the interview phase where we will test technically their skills could be when we talk about ICTs or electricity or mechanics so we can have very technical tests with them, could be Excel could be banking, could be finance, could be anything and then we have an HR interview as well whether it's by video with the limitation today or face to face when we can once we have assessed the people, that's when we do the shortlist and the shortlist is based on both technical tests and personal interview, the HR and then the CVs will be submit to you guys in Europe based on your requirements in this process we will involve you of course to understand what you want, what you need and what is not written on the on paper, so sometimes it's good to have a quick call to understand what you will be looking for. If we go to next line Elson, please this is very important to us this is very generic and this is how we recruit, fair recruitment and compliance with these equal standards, this is very important and this is why we've been in Africa for the last 15 years and that's why we plan and we believe that we could say another 15 years or more so being compliance, being ethical with what we are doing to have everything in writing, okay the word and the speaking in Africa is the cultural speaking is important but we put everything in writing we are compliant with local regulation especially and we will talk after when we will have to not only recruit but manage the talents or manage the contract of employment the payroll, the taxes, the medical insurance, the pension make sure that all compliance with local regulation we do zero discrimination with people all the time, this is very very important it seems very straightforward when I say it but it's not the case all the time so first we make sure that we apply this, we do do the gentle employer as well to make sure that the talents we are sending are not going to not that good company and even recently this week we had to decline a job because the client was not serious on his search so we declined the job we test the talents as well we can hear that in Africa sometimes or in Nigeria there is lots of fake scams and so on, yeah it happens but to face that we put in place some online tests so we can test the people before we interview them and we can select only the one who have passed the test and if you ask me how can we make sure that the right people passing the test because we are filming these people so we can make sure after once we interview them face to face that's not the big sister who have attended the test obviously we don't charge people talents for the job so this is very important and we comply with the RGPD even if it's not applicable in Africa it's not live yet but we apply this for international clients next slide Nelson please so this next two slides and I will combine in one you have a general overview of the process of recruitment and so you will publish the vacancy or we will publish the vacancy we will select the candidates we select the candidates and then we will discuss about this incubation phase and the incubation phase could become a solution phase as well where Nelson if we can go to the next slide during this incubation phase that could happen in three different context you know when the travel restriction with the covid is happened we cannot travel or whether there is some administration delays to open visa work permit and so on that's one that means this incubation phase will be put in place when we cannot or when you don't want or you can't have the talents in Europe so travel restriction or admin restriction the company wants to implement so you decide to work remotely with these candidates with the talent which we can see is working more and more and more so the talents will remain in Nigeria or in Senegal so you will need a structure to manage it and then when the talents after a certain time will come back to his home country that's where we will be there to support you whether you have a local branch or you don't have a local branch we will manage everything from the contract of employment to the payroll so taxes, medical insurance and pension so that's where we can support you in country when you have to manage your talent locally I try to do as short as possible not to be told off but happy to discuss on the question and answer Ok thank you very much Cedric and Rob maybe for Rob I have another question what about the Dutch speaking language will there be any courses or lessons in Dutch? Yeah that's a very good question actually so I think it will depend a little bit on the case by case so you will have maybe companies that are interested in you know bringing over African talents for a longer period or maybe you know on a permanent basis and then I think that indeed these courses are very very important and so there we will have to see with for Dutch against hapenburgering how we can provide these talents with Dutch courses other companies might you know be looking into a scheme or they might for instance have a project in Africa or a branch in Africa and they might say ok I bring someone over for like 9 months to train them to integrate them with the company processes etc and then I might hire them back in Senegal or back in Nigeria so the question would then be is this relevant also to push these people you know to follow Dutch courses some of them might want to and might be interested others might think that this is useful so we will have to look also I think into the options and the possibilities there together with the companies but it will depend a lot I think on what is the perspective of the company if we're talking about longer term recruitment or permanent recruitment then it's essential if we're talking about yes a job placement of a short period and then we will see where this individual you know whether this individual goes back to the country of origin or not hired by the company or whether it goes back to the country of origin and it may be hired by a partner a branch of the company etc so we will need to look into that you know a bit case by case but we have good contacts with the providers of language courses and we can of course play a facilitating role as well ok thank you for this clarification I think it's very clear that the project matches very demand driven so that Taylor made actually we will look into the possibilities and opportunities each time let's have a look at our team in Belgium before we go to some other questions in the Q&A so we are actually quite a broad team of employer agencies also ION of course but also Aldelia for support for their expertise so you can certainly contact us whenever a problem or questions are arising I think we can go to the next slide because there are also websites so if any company wants to register for a match project that can be done directly on the website that would not create any obligation from your site as a company but it's maybe useful for us to see and to look at the interested companies to have a better view on them but I think I have another some questions in the Q&A on the website besides there also a project brochure with some more information and maybe more information will be also go further into detail regarding two chosen countries, Rob, Sina and Nigeria why those two countries and are there any plans to broaden the countries in the future? Yes thank you Davi, I think that's also a very good question why Nigeria, why Senegal I think there's a number of reasons, I remember at the time the assessment you know of the African countries that were potential candidates there were several criteria that we looked into obviously we needed ideally a French speaking and an English speaking country because we're covering four EU member states and yes for instance the Netherlands they are more interested in English speakers while in Luxembourg they are more interested in French speakers so that's one second one was the availability of labour, so if you look at the pools of highly qualified labour is there a surplus in these countries, if there would not be a surplus then we would have to go and take away employees in African countries and that would of course create a brain drain that would create a lot of friction, that would be negative I think to take away skilled labour that is active in African countries so in both Senegal and Nigeria we have a surplus of young people entering the labour market being qualified, being entrepreneurial being active, but not necessarily being employed in a classical way and this was for us definitely an important one, the quantity then the quality we looked at the quality as well, what's the quality of the educational system are there relevant units that provide the labour market with good candidates the state of technology the availability of tech hubs do these things exist, do we have access to them can we judge to some extent the quality and these two countries came up as countries where there is indeed a quite dynamic technology scene, technology in the very broad sense of the word and then there were other more internal elements I think that played a role as well, for instance the strength of the IOM offices in these countries the position, the experience, etc. it's a number of internal things that played a role as well also the donor European Commission wanted us to look at Western Africa and not necessarily the southern part of Africa so there were a number of internal elements that also played a role with that in the future yes, yes and no I think I think this is a pilot now with these two countries if this is interesting if there is a possibility to create value for the European companies through such a sheen then it's highly probable that these kind of sheens will be repeated in the future and potentially also with other countries you have to know that today there are already some other sheens for instance between Morocco and Planders on ICT specialists there was a sheen also between Tunisia and Belgium for interns or internships so there are a number of piloting sheens that are already taking place and the idea is really also to look into this like from the perspective of a legal way of engaging with young applicants so we hear a lot in the media about irregular migration and all the problems related to that these kind of sheens want to organize the migration flow they want to look into what are the possibilities to set up some legal pathways can this be beneficial for both the European countries but also the countries of origins or a hypothesis is also that a number of these Africans will have to go back to their country of origin not all of them will stay in Belgium you know the willingness for companies to have them stay so we're really looking into this legal pathways as they call it and we're trying to you know set up pilots that you know prove that there is another value for the different stakeholders and if we succeed in doing that then I'm quite convinced that there will be more projects like this in the future with other countries as well thank you Rob for this clarification if there are any other questions please do not hesitate to ask them in the Q&A I have another from Kara if there is any specific attention in the selection phase for the fact that these talents are not applying for a job next door but actually for a job thousands of kilometers away and maybe I can take this one Yes of course this is a very interesting question very important because people will be relocated even in terms of culture but we can see that the talents of Africa are really willing to move to relocate we can see from the beginning of their studies they travel the world to follow, to attend universities whether they are in Europe or in the US so they use or even to go to other countries to get trained, we've got some Senegalese people going to Cote d'Ivoire or Ghana to get trained as well so it could be regional movement or international lots are going to France to follow universities as well so these kind of migration movements they used to travel and they are very keen to learn, they are very mature very early due to their life and they will be very keen to learn and to move and to grow in Europe so this is something that we will see lots of people willing to apply for these jobs I think Rob as well I just maybe want to add to that and it's also from previous experiences that in the recruitment process we also need to be very clear on attracting the right people and it's a matter of attitude because we've seen also in the past that some of these young Africans see also this as an opportunity to get into Europe more than as an investor their own company and their own CV and we have had mismatches of people that arrived in Europe and that were not serious about the job placement or not serious enough so for instance in the previous project I remember we had to send back some people after two weeks in Belgium so I want to stress as well that this is indeed also part of our job in the pre-selection to make sure that we are attracting and talking to people that are doing all of this not as an entry ticket to Europe but as an investment in their own career that are taking this seriously from a professional job perspective and once they arrive invest and commit to do the best they can within the company that they will be integrated in so we are also I think we need to keep that in mind that this can sometimes also attract people with different intentions or wrong intentions and we need to filter those out as much as possible so it's part of our job I think the filter is never 100% so there might always be a few cases where it goes wrong to assist the company and make sure that these people can be replaced or can be if it's really a bad experience send back and we've done that in the past as well so I think it's important in the pre-selection phase already to make sure that the candidates that we're talking to are there from a very professional perspective with the ambition of investing in their own careers and in their own CV indeed I think that's a very key element within this kind of project actually the work link also to work in Europe and to adapt to the European lifestyle to say but I think Cedric also has a great experience in that kind so Rob maybe one follow up question it's a really demand-driven project so are there any limits on finding some profiles or specific kind of sectors are there limits on the sectors or profiles? no indeed we're open to any sectors and any profiles of course as Jeroen and the VDAB has shown there's of course sectors where the needs are higher than other sectors so obviously naturally I think we always move to those sectors but we're open to any sector and any type of company so if you're not an ICT company that's really not a problem we can look into your vacancies we can look into the profiles that you're interested in and there's no limit with that regards with regards to timing we are also quite flexible this is a project that will last until the end of 2022 so we're not pushing anyone at this stage to start international recruitment with the Covid with the crisis we know that this is not a high on the priority list of companies so we could explore possibilities to hire next year or later what we are trying to do today is really to have this dialogue with companies and that's also why it's important why we would like to invite companies that have an interest and an interest is not a decision to hire tomorrow we're exploring this to register also on our webpage you've seen the link in this presentation you find the link you know on the LinkedIn page where you find it when you type Match or IOM Belgium and if you register in our database then we can keep you informed and we can have also bilateral calls with you we can provide you with more technical information on how it would work etc etc so we can go to our bilateral conversation where we can exchange the exact needs that you might be having and also on the timing Thank you for this interesting information because I think indeed it's very important to have that feedback or input from the companies themselves as well so an interest mark within the project is not an engagement yet of course there are companies willing to share some information with us or share some vacancies I think that will be very interesting another question to Rob is there any return element incorporated in this match project so after jobs are terminated etc and who will be responsible for that part Excellent question once again we need to agree with the company what the setup is so imagine that the company says I'm happy to take one person for a period of 9 months then we need to decide towards the end of this 9 months does the company want to continue with this individual and add for instance another 9 months or a longer period or does the company say well for me it's been a good experience or whatever and then we will indeed take care of the return element so the idea is indeed that the people that engage in companies here in Belgium if the company decides not to go through with them that we indeed accompany the individuals to go back to their country of origin so we will also tell every candidate in Africa that in principle this whole sheen is circular so they will come but they're also expected to go back it's only in case both the migrant and the company say no we want to continue together that we can do an exception if one of those two says no then they go back so the principle is really yes we go back and we accompany them we will also reintegrate them back in Senegal or Nigeria so it's not just you know putting them on a flight and say well that was it no our colleagues of IOM in Senegal in Nigeria will look together with them at possible opportunities of employment at possible you know people that would want to create their own company entrepreneurship together with Aldelia you know and their teams we will look into you know possible other companies that are willing to hire these people back in Africa so we will make a lot of links to our networks to make sure also that these people that are in Belgium have also a good incentive to go back to Nigeria or Senegal ideally we would even find a job for them you know back in Africa so we know for instance that from a previous sheen with Tunisia all the people that came to Belgium did not have a job when they came two months after their return to Tunisia they all had a job so in terms of employability this is really also a big added value of this kind of sheen is people because of their international experience etc they have it easier you know to find a job also back in their home okay thank you Rob so the support is not only restricted to the one way ticket to Belgium of course but indeed in the back to the original country as well I think a question or remark of yours I think it's a correct one that they are looking always for skills and stuff for their African projects but most of the time there is kind of problem issues with the administration with visa requests so could the match project be used for training staff to be employed in Africa just for the training that's absolutely a good idea and that's what we typically see also in previous streams is that companies that have activities in Africa or that have offices or projects in Africa bring in these Africans to Belgium you know to train them on the job or formally train them you know our external trainings and then pose them back in their projects in Africa so that's definitely part of the aim here and we have very good relationships with the authorities here in Belgium they are part of this project the Flemish side for the work permit they visit the national side for the visa so we are working closely with them and we are also going to accompany the companies with this procedure so that we speed them up so that instead of having to wait three to four months to get the paperwork done we can try to limit that to like six to eight weeks we need to go through the process it takes a bit of time yes but if we can limit it together you know by looking at things together that could potentially also be interesting and beneficial for the company yes so the project and also looking with the companies for opportunities within the legislation regarding economic migration I think there are various opportunities of possibilities to give the schemes of economic migration a little bit more form one last question but what about if they are here with the project and they find a better opportunity here in Belgium with another company would that be a problem or not I don't know maybe Rob or myself would you also answer that I think for the project that won't be a problem actually the person is free of course to enter within a contract I think if everything is within the legislation and I don't think that there's any problem you have a single permit for a certain period of time with a certain employer but of course there are some actually there are some limitations on it but also some expectations in the legislation itself Rob absolutely right baby so what I can say is that if we agree with the company for a stay of one year and we agree with the authorities that there is indeed a single permit for one year and of course this comes to a term once this comes to a term and this person would want to go and work for another company and this other company I think would have to do the administrative follow up of having this person stay longer keeping this file being accepted etc etc so that will then most probably will not be done by the project we will not promote mobility in Belgium so that's a bit a step too far but that is a possibility and I think indeed correctly that could be an option also you know companies you know to see you know who's already here and some of these people that are already here so it's not excluded I would say but it would also I think not be promoted by the by the match project as such with most cases the new employer will also have to go with the new procedure to request a single permit so it's not the ideal situation of course there for now the last question of John Paul what about the double taxation issues in Senegal and Nigeria are there any problems there or restrictions there maybe I see Cedric wants to answer that question yes that's a very important question as well when the talents will be in Nigeria or in Senegal we will be responsible for their taxes so that means they don't need to pay taxes in Belgium they will be paying taxes in Nigeria because they will be working physically in Nigeria that will be their fiscal interest and once they move to Belgium then the contract will end in Nigeria and we start in Belgium or in the Netherlands however thank you for this clarification Cedric Rob maybe one more question for you are there any universities or educational organization involved in this project or will be the involvement of those kind of organizations yes it's a good question I'm not sure whether you refer to universities back in Africa or universities in the other countries so I'm not sure which one I can focus on but for sure we will be working with universities and educational organizations back in Africa right Cedric so we will be looking into what profiles are we wanting to identify where can we find those and then we will be going to campuses you know education organizations to post our vacancies it's something that we're going to do I don't know if you want to add the word on that absolutely right Rob we are working in chose partnership with universities both Nigeria and Senegal but also with national employment agencies as well with whom we will be communicating the jobs opportunities and we will be training them sometimes in assessing the candidates so it will be working with them with both and we will advise as well the universities where we are facing shortage of skills and what skills are missing so this is very important to have this communication between the companies we will receive the talents and the one who are producing these talents we are educating these talents we are training these talents so this will be a direct communication between the universities and institutions and then you might add also just one word on the engagement towards the Belgian education and the university organization so in Belgium we have established contacts with some organizations and we invite them to get with a number of other stakeholders what we call stakeholder that will take place in Belgium in the second part of this year so after summer you can hear about that we will probably disseminate the invitation to this network of participants in this webinar but definitely the universities and research sector will be there and will also co-organize with us that stakeholder meeting so that we can combine also the little bit more academic theoretical angle related to this kind of international mobility versus the very practical angle where today very much in the practical side but of course there is a lot of studies and research being done on these things and it could be interesting to discuss those as well during that meeting so a lot of relevant organizations involved in this project in this project regarding smart economic demand driven migration actually so if there are any interest in the match project please do not hesitate to contact us one of the partners you will also have the co-ordinate I think also this webinar will be sent to all participants here I don't see any questions anymore but I think it's a quarter after three which should be the end of this webinar if there are any questions popping up the next coming days or weeks so to ask them with our contact information can be found on the website and also some more information detailed information regarding the project I don't know if one of the panel lists I think I can only end by thank you all very much for the information and the expertise maybe Rob to have an ending word for this webinar yes thank you very much Davey for the very good time keeping in the excellent moderations so thanks a lot for that, thanks to all participants thanks for the interesting questions I know that this is a complicated topic and that once you start thinking about it there's a lot of other questions that pop up so don't hesitate coming back to us today we are there for you if you have questions, if you want to double check things you will find our contact information all over the place so feel free to reach out and if you're interested in following up on the match project please register on our website and we'll be in touch with you then shortly thank you very much and have a nice afternoon everyone thank you all have a nice day