Education responsible for Youth Unemployment?

Africa continues to grapple with warring trends of un educated and unemployed youth. According to the ILO’s World Employment and Social Outlook (2016) trends for Youth report shows that as a result, the global number of unemployed youth is set to rise by half a million this year to reach 71 million – the first such increase in 3 years. This means that with a youth population that is expected to double, to over 830 million, by 2050 in the whole continent, the incidence of unemployment among youth in Northern Africa remains elevated at 29.3 per cent in 2016, representing the second highest rate across all regions. Therefore, these figures indicate that there is a real huge problem in Africa.
It has also been argued elsewhere that unemployment is caused by lack of an education. However, it is also true that many young people graduate and still have no meaningful, professional employment; does this therefore mean that the education is useless? Perhaps in this case, yes it is useless if one cannot find employment for what they studied for. For example in some countries such as Uganda, on average, 400,000 graduates are passed out by institutions every year and only about 9,000 jobs are available. So what happens to the 391,000 graduates? Who cares about them? Who plans for them? These questions have remained unanswered for a while.

In a bid to try to curb the warring trends, in July 2, 2006, the African Union Heads of States and Governments endorsed the African Youth Charter (AYC), which entered into force on August 8, 2009. The plan for the youths in that charter was titled “The Youth Decade Plan of Action”, which target was to be realized between 2009 and 2018 and therefore, much still awaits to be seen. The deep rooted issues by the Youth have not been dealt with exhaustively but only many more plan have continued to be developed such as the Agenda 2063 which was formed at the OUA/AU 50th Anniversary Celebration held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in May 2013. It is not lack of many Agendas that we lack in Africa but the basics of life! Will the Agendas deliver? Must we put too much money and time on developing agendas or dealing with the real problem?

According to World Bank, Young people under 25 represent three-fifths of sub-Saharan Africa’s unemployed population, and 72 percent of the youth population lives on less than $2 a day. To help their families, 30 per cent of children between the ages of five and 14 are forced to work, which robs them of the educational opportunities that could break their families’ cycles of intergenerational poverty. This therefore means that Unemployment is one of the biggest contributors to uneducated youth as they will spend time fending for their families than stay in school.

It is now very clear that unemployment is an issue in Africa and lack of education also is a big threat to the socio-economic and political lives of the young people. In order to address this, there is need to identify key and address the skills gaps, tackle inequality, implement plans of action to the latter, involve youth in planning and make education affordable to all.


By Michael Aboneka Jr