The World Economic Forum on 17 January 2018 published the Global Risks Report 2018. Each year, the Global Risks Report works with experts and decision-makers across the world to identify and analyze the most pressing risks that we face today.
My main area of interest on the report was on issues regarding unemployment and job creation. Particularly on the assessment of unemployment as a risk and its impact in Africa.
While unemployment was not part of the major focus areas on the current report, it is important to look at it’s assessment in comparison with last year’s standings. Also, its connection with other risks.
Unemployment or underemployment remains a huge economic risk. It is strongly interconnected with adverse consequences of technological advances and failure of national governance. This could lead to profound social instability.
The 2014 Global Risks Report highlighted the risk that the global financial crisis would create a “lost generation”. The report pointed to youth unemployment as a corrosive legacy, with the capacity to hinder young people’s integration into traditional patterns of economic life, such as earning, saving and building careers.
Among the specific issues raised were long-term unemployment; low-quality, part-time and temporary employment; weak links between education and work; the impact of demographic change and migration; and increasing pressures on social protection systems.
The sad news is that unemployment continues to grow, hitting harder on countries in Sub-Saharan Africa looking at the estimate figures from International Labour Organization (ILO).
The 2018 Global Risks Report outlines that youth unemployment is set to remain an important global challenge— particularly as demographic shifts in developing countries gather pace— and will continue to amplify numerous domestic and global risks, including social exclusion, mass migration and generational clashes over fiscal and labour-market policies.
I was shocked to learn that youth unemployment rates are significantly lower in developing than advanced economies. Where one would have thought otherwise.
Youth unemployment decreased slightly over the past decade in Africa. However, the levels of working poverty among the youth remain high. This could be a sign of underemployment as a more pressing issue to deal with. This also calls for expedited improvements in the education system across Africa.
Surprisingly, the report also highlights the shortcomings of youth employment schemes. In Africa, a scheme that exists and we can point to is the African Development Bank Strategy for Jobs for Youth in Africa – strategy for creating 25 million jobs and equipping 50 million youth by 2025.
In countries where youth unemployment appears most intractable, structural drivers mean that such short-term interventions will struggle to have much effect. Deeper structural reforms are needed. More so, these reforms should be accompanied by education and workplace reforms.
These education reforms should in part prepare people for pioneering income generating projects. The education system should in its curriculum include programs that are tailored towards enhancing livelihood skills, with more emphasis on the acquisition of vocational skills.
The notion “skills and literacy for better livelihoods” adequately encapsulates our present need, which can be used to guide programming of future literacy endeavors. We are forced to figure out ways of making the education system a lot better.
Not to improve on what it already does, rather making it better at enabling people in staying relevant and in doing what’s needed at the moment: which is viewing entrepreneurship as an attractive career option.
Regarding the workplace reforms, employers should partner with training institutions to provide with information on what the marketable skills to be taught are. This will curb the instances of skills mismatches for employees thereby creating a much larger pool of potential employees.