22m African youth give up on job search

By AGENCIES

AROUND 40 million youth on the African continent are unemployed, and 22 million of the 40 million have given up on finding a job, a report released yesterday said.

The African Economic Outlook 2012 also noted that youth represented 60% of the continent’s unemployed.

The document was co-written by the African Development Bank, the OECD Development Centre, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP).Youth unemployment was a challenge for most African governments, including SA, where the level of youth unemployment is reported at over 35%.

“In low-income countries, most young people work but are poor nevertheless.

In African middle-income countries, on the other hand, such as South Africa or the Northern African countries, despite better education, more youth are inactive than working,” said Mario Pezzini, director at the OECD Development Centre.

Youths had the potential to present a significant threat to social cohesion and political stability if they did not secure decent living conditions, the report warned.

High growth alone was not sufficient to guarantee productive employment, according to the report.

“Creating productive employment for Africa’s rapidly growing young population is an immense challenge but also the key to future prosperity,” said authors of the report.

According to the authors, between 2000 and 2008, despite world-topping economic growth rates, and a better educated youth, Africa only created 16 million jobs for young people aged between 15 and 24.

“The continent is experiencing jobless growth,” said Mthuli Ncube, chief economist and vice-president of the African Development Bank (AfDB).

“That is an unacceptable reality on a continent with such an impressive pool of youth, talent and creativity.”

African countries should design better co-ordinated strategies to effectively tackle youth employment, focusing on job creation in the private sector while providing the right conditions for businesses of all sizes to grow and expand their work force, the report recommended.

Areas to look into, the report advised, included a focus on the informal sector, which contained immense entrepreneurial talent and could serve as engines for inclusive growth since they could absorb higher numbers of unemployed youths.