AS the nation celebrated National Youth Day on February 21, there lies beneath the jubilation a deeper and more painful truth — a generation still hovering on the margins of opportunity.
Zimbabwe’s youth, restless and resilient, remain trapped in a vicious loop of unemployment, disillusionment and silence.
Hovering around a 90% unemployment rate, the call by the Youth Empowerment, Development and Vocational Training minister, Tino Machakaire, that graduates without a National Youth Service certificate “may struggle to get a job,” hits an already desperate demographic like a whip on an open wound.
The declaration, while framed as patriotic and procedural, exposes a widening chasm between intent and reality in our youth empowerment agenda.
When the minister asserts, “We cannot have people out there who have done nothing and think they can be university graduates… You can go to university, but without a National Youth Service certificate, you may struggle to get a job and I want to assure you that you will suffer. This is the procedure, this is the way to go,” one senses a well-meaning belief in discipline, patriotism and capacity building.
Yet behind the rhetoric lurks a dire question — what jobs are these graduates struggling to get in the first place?
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In a country where formality has crumbled and survival has become an art form, requiring yet another certificate before access to work rings hollow to most of the country’s young people navigating a barren job market.
The idea of the National Youth Service, if executed with transparency, inclusion and skill relevance, could indeed be a positive pathway towards national renewal.
The programme’s ambitions — to instil “values of patriotism, national identity and volunteerism” — echo the post-independence yearning to build a cohesive and responsible youth citizenry.
However, noble as those intentions sound, renewed nationalism cannot put food on the table nor can it replace the urgent need for structural reforms that generate real employment.
Patriotism without productivity is an empty anthem; it neither retains the brilliance of our graduates nor stops the silent exodus of skills leaving the country in search of dignity elsewhere.
The question Zimbabwe’s policymakers must wrestle with is this: are we creating a generation of loyal, jobless patriots or a generation of empowered, innovative citizens equipped to drive the economy forward?
The youth, who make up over 60% of the population, represent not just a demographic but an untapped engine of economic transformation. But this engine cannot run on rhetoric.
It needs fuel — skills that match global demands, access to capital, structural inclusion in agriculture, technology and manufacturing, and most critically, a governance ecosystem that rewards merit over political affiliation.
To tie employment to a certificate rather than competence risks alienating the very young minds who could rescue the nation from economic stagnation.
The government, private sector, and development partners must converge on more than career guidance — they must co-create sustainable pathways that turn dreams into dignified livelihoods. The youth must not just be celebrated; they must be trusted, invested in and included in the architecture of national progress.
The reality is that every idle young person represents lost productivity, growing frustration, and a potential crisis.
The rising scourge of drug abuse, crime and mental health challenges are symptoms of an abandoned generation seeking escape from a system that seems to have little room for them.
We cannot simply train young people to wave flags of patriotism; we must train them to code, to innovate, to farm smartly, to build industries and to lead.
If Zimbabwe is serious about achieving an upper-middle-income status by 2030 and leaving no one behind, then leaving the majority of young citizens stuck in cycles of helplessness is not an option.
We need deliberate national action — investment in modern vocational institutions, incubation hubs for youth-led enterprises, incentives for industries to employ local graduates and mechanisms that reward productivity, not political patronage.
The government’s Empower Bank and youth-targeted loans must cease to be instruments of tokenism and instead become real developmental tools accessible to all deserving youths across the social and political divide.
The dividends of our demographic wealth can only be harvested if inclusion, innovation, and integrity become the pillars of our youth development strategy.
Zimbabwe’s youth are not short of dreams — they are short of opportunity. In celebrating them, we must not merely demand certificates; we must deliver futures.
What the nation needs is not another generation that suffers in silence, but one empowered to rise, work and build a Zimbabwe that belongs equally to every young man and woman — certificate or not.