Africa, with the world`s youngest population with median age of 19.7 years, burns with a raging question of what to do with its teeming young people who grapple with unemployment as a daily reality.
The most dangerous thing about unemployment is obviously that there it creates a vacuum – a vast one at that – which spells disaster because it can bring about the breeding of just about anything.
For many of Africa`s young people spread across its fifty-four countries, unemployment engenders a number of inevitable implications which can count lack of adequate engagement, penury and poor human capital development among them. Because unemployment breeds stagnation which in turn perpetuates vicious cycles of back-breaking poverty and underdevelopment, it must be highly undesirable to any continent that is serious about its development. And Africa is serious, or should at least be serious with its development, especially in the face of senseless conflicts and devastating instability.
Of course, with labour issues, as long as the question is a question of employment, there is always the problem of underemployment as well as nagging issues about conditions of work which necessarily embrace concerns about remuneration, work hours and other benefits that are necessary to strike a work-life balance.
But just how many jobs does Africa need to keep its young people sufficiently engaged and defuse the conflicts that wreak havoc on the continent and its great hopes?
According to The Peoples Charter on Jobs in Africa</em> over fifteen million decent jobs must be created annually for youths before 2025. <em>Peoples Charter, created by the Jobs Now Africa coalition as part of its ‘ JobsNowAfrica’ campaign is an interactive tool designed to encourage the public to petition governments and non-state partners to prioritise jobs. The forty organisations behind the coalition warned that the continent is at the tipping point of what could be the economic breakthrough from the pandemic, but only if investments are made to prioritize job creation.
Noting that Africas population might double to 2.5 billion by 2050, it said Africas jobless youth risks casting a pall over its economic growth.
The organisations warned that the continent risks losing its youths if it failed to tackle unemployment by investing in tech and digital industries, green job opportunities, modernizing agriculture and implementing the African Continental Free Trade Area.
Enter South Africa, Namibia and Nigeria – three of Africa`s most iconic countries and unfortunate models of unemployment. In an August 2021 Report by Bloomberg, South Africa had the highest unemployment rate on a global list of 82 countries as the jobless rate increased to 34.4 per cent in Q2 2021 from 32. 6 per cent in Q1 2021.
Namibia ranked second behind South Africa with unemployment rate at 33.4 per cent, while Nigeria ranked behind Namibia with an unemployment rate put at 33.3 per cent. Outside the top three African countries on the list, Jordan came in fourth place with unemployment put at 25.0 per cent, while Costa Rica ranked fifth with an unemployment rate of 18.1 per cent.
Of course, because there is a link between crime and unemployment, it should come as no surprise that South Africa has the third-highest crime rate in the world with Namibia and Nigeria not so far behind.
When young people whose faculties are still intact are left with nothing meaningful to do, they do anything at all that is available and most times, that which is available to them is that which is undesirable to their immediate societies.
To fix its job deficit, Africa must go back to the drawing board. There must be conscious and conscientious investments made to create jobs that are sustainable. There must also be strident efforts made to ensure that the African worker acquires the skill suitable to the labour market of the future.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
