Africa's Youth

The article I found was from Africa Renewal, and just like my last post, it refers to youth unemployment. Youth unemployment is a very serious issue in Africa and nobody seems to know why, or how to solve this issue. After reading several articles and looking through the posts my group members have made, a lot of them seem to lead back to education. Putting two and two together, you can see that the lack of education in Africa is what is causing this unemployment problem. Africa's youth have little, to no education so nobody really wants to invest in them. Why would you hire an illiterate young person, when you could hire somebody who's more mature and has a full education? That is where the problem comes into place.

According to Africa Renewal, there are several reasons why you should pay more attention to Africa's youth. Africa seems to have the youngest population in the world, and that trend is only going to double as years pass. You see, the problem with that is that youth unemployment occurs at a rate more than twice that of adults. According to the World Bank, youth account for 60% of all African unemployed. However, it is even worse for the women. In Africa, even if women have equivalent skills and experience, it is still easier for men to get jobs than it is for women. Being a young male in Africa is extremely difficult when it comes to employment, but being a young woman is even worse.

Many young people are able to find work, but does it really mean anything if it's not in the right places? A lot of Africa's youth do find work, but they are in places that do not pay good wages, places that do not develop good working skills and places that do not provide a measure of good job security. What's the good in working if you're not going to get anything out of it? The article says that "more than 70% of the youth in African countries are either self-employed or contributing to family work." But what is that really doing for them? That's not a real job and that's certainly not going to help the unemployment rate drop. The International Labor Organization reports that 82% of African workers and "working poor."

The youth are starting to become extremely talented and creative, and the amount of them is only going to increase, so this is extremely unacceptable. They are saying youth unemployment is a time ticking bomb, which now appears to be relatively close to exploding. African leaders met and declared 2009-18 the "African Youth Decade." Their plan emphasized the need to equally address both unemployment and underemployment. African governments haven't done much, but they have made some effort to match their words with action. The youth are looking for jobs in populous cities, any type of job just to keep their body and soul together however, even those who are lucky enough to find employment are the first to be laid off when economic growth derails. For the youth, it's like a lose-lose situation.

There have been several ideas on ways to create more jobs. One institution wants to focus on manufacturing because they say it urges more investment in several topics that employ young people. African leaders seemed to be more focused on other things and that is where the problems arise. They are saying unemployment is a problem but no one seems to be doing anything about it. Most analysts agree on the need to revise Africa's education curriculum to include skills and enterprise development. The Brookings Institution proposes an urgent focus on post-primary education. Africa's growing youth population comes with high energy, creativity and talents which they say are also "the key to future prosperity." Now, it all depends on whether or not the African governments can grab the unemployment bull by it's horns and solve this problem once and for all.