Youth unemployment: Government, UN agencies, groping in the dark

Various government agencies and policy makers up to cabinet level have been scratching their heads on what to do to resolve the problem of youth unemployment especially for graduates, seemingly to no real solution.
One formula concerning the issue is the usual method applied for poverty alleviation strategies as a whole, of conducting surveys to establish the size of the problem, which basically empowers non-governmental organizations and ministerial agencies to an extent, in seeking resources or organizing specific activities or efforts tied to managing the unemployment problem. It seems this aspect of things is too riddled with weaknesses to inspire confidence.

Speaking about the issue in an interview lately, the Labour and Employment minister Gaudentia Kabaka affirmed that unemployment in the country stood at about 11.7 per cent, which tallied with statistics provided by the United Nations agency, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) via its country office.

It gives statistics for unemployment in other East African Community partner states as 40 per cent unemployment level for Kenya, 30 per cent for Rwanda, 35 per cent for Burundi and 4.6 per cent for Uganda.

These figures suggest that the various countries are managed or governed in quite different ways and perhaps have profoundly different socioeconomic structures, so that Uganda can virtually solve unemployment as a problem while Kenya has nearly half the working population unemployed, etc.

For one thing, UN agencies tend to be too close to official government agencies to be able to sort out what is poor and what is properly worked upon in the sort of data they get from such agencies.

Government agencies have a habit of requiring auxiliary payment for any sort of activity that is done outside office premises, and notoriously lacks follow-up and precision on follow-up concerning the provision of various goods of services, because of a culture of gaining from emergencies.

Once there is a great need for data or provision of some other services tied to that wasn’t done earlier or it was poorly executed, chances are that the government would unblock new funds or a UN agency like the ILO provide funds for doing the work all over again, and this way income projections of civil servants are improved.

It is therefore hard to say which of the various figures on unemployment in East Africa is “closer to the truth,” and usually when one seeks to make out a case for this or that impression, it is helpful to compare figures from different sources, but unemployment is hard to determine by that method because not many private agencies concern themselves with the issue.

That is why UN efforts as well as the mainstay of government agencies like the National Planning Commission which is gaining excessive influence of late, as if economic growth has again started to rely on government plans instead of private investment and foreign direct investment flows, will remain a half full glass sort of logic for the foreseeable future.

Wasting too much resources getting plans into place in unhelpful because bureaucrats simply use those exercises for income purposes, meanwhile as establishing statistics of unemployment helps little, if the idea is for the government to see and act.

The key issue is to accept already negotiated structures of the East African Common Market so that business is eased, investment flows rise, local credit circulation surge, and industry thus creating more jobs.

SOURCE: GUARDIAN ON SUNDAY