By Tapiwa Gomo AFRICA has the world’s youngest population, with a median age of 19,7 years. This population group has been growing rapidly over the years. About a third of the continent’s population is estimated to be between 10 and 24 years old with the number estimated to double by 2050.
In planning terms, such a huge young population group represents an energetic labour force that can be used to transform economies, if there is a proper plan. It is not just in the numbers. The youth in Africa are also becoming more and more educated with estimates showing that nearly 60% of those who are 24 years of age have completed high school and an increasing proportion of them are pursuing tertiary education.
In any country that has a good plan and a sharp strategic vision, a large young, educated and skilled population is the main ingredient needed to spawn economic growth. If properly harnessed, this increase in the working age population could support increased productivity and stronger, more inclusive economic growth across the continent. But that is not likely to happen. Instead youth are already finding themselves unemployed, emigrating, abusing drugs or engaged in social and political instability activities.
Part of the problem is that at independence, most African countries continued to pursue the colonial education system — an under resourced replica of the Western system — designed to train and churn out people who could provide labour to the existing colonial industry. It also carried the objective to produce a student who was submissive and loyal to the colonial system — one that is weak and could not stand on its own without depending on the Western economic system.
For that reason, and because the submissive student advanced the interest of some post-independent African leaders, Western education was and is still viewed as the ideal by African countries to the extent that they have not realised the need to adjust its objectives to the needs of the local context.
That is why today Africa’s education system produces students for a labour market that is owned and controlled by foreigners. The outcome is simple. When governments are broke, they rely on Western countries to borrow money. When skilled youth cannot get jobs in their own countries, they skip the borders to secure employment in Western countries. When an African politician campaigns, they promise jobs by inviting foreign investors. That is what a labour-focused education system does to nations.
This is despite that access to quality education has become so expensive that families trade their livelihood assets to raise money for school fees — another neoliberal condition introduced in Africa via structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s. The programmes urged governments to ask parents to pay school fees for their children, instead of funding it via taxes. That was part of pushing governments to cut spending.
Most Western countries are heavily industrialised and have limited space for youth entrepreneurship and it thus makes sense that their education system focuses on churning out skilled labour to sustain their industries. This is not the case in Africa whose countries have struggled to industrialise.
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In fact, at independence African countries were supposed to adopt the east Asian education system based on the realisation that industrialisation needed to precede education for employment. Most Asian countries tweaked their education system to inculcate innovative and entrepreneurial skills among their youth — in a way delegating economic and employment creation responsibilities to individuals and families.
As individual and family projects grew to become huge enterprises, they started generating employment for the poor groups that were either unable to secure good education or start their own projects. That is what happens where countries take the opportunity to cultivate the capacity of their youth into a valuable resource for their economic development instead of using them for political rallies and toyi toyi.
According to the African Development Bank, 10 million to 12 million youth are churned into the labour market each year, but of these only three million enter the formal job market.
The majority of those who remain outside the formal market do not have stable economic opportunities in a continent that does not offer social protection.
This is because, African parents send their children to school on the risky assumption that someone is creating a company or an employment opportunity to absorb them.
The results of youth unemployment in Africa are pervasive and severe and not only limited to the bleak future they face but they would have exhausted their families’ livelihood resources in pursuit of education.
They have less or nothing to inherit from their families other than the possibility of securing a job.
Unemployment among youths is the beginning of an impoverished generation which translates to poor living conditions, push factor for migration out of Africa and contributes to conflict on the continent itself.
In addition, lack of access to economic and employment opportunities for youth is an indication of failure to capitalise on one of the continent’s greatest assets for growth.
Addressing this urgent situation requires a relook at the education system and tailor it to produce graduates who are ready to capitalise on available opportunities and start their own enterprises. That will be one of the ways of addressing the multi-faceted causes of youth unemployment on the continent which can help drive a locally-driven and inclusive economic growth. The continent cannot base its economic development on foreign investors and reduce its own youth to labour and then expect stable economies and political environments.
- Tapiwa Gomo is a development consultant based in Pretoria, South Africa.
