WASHINGTON, April 26, 2009: A panel of experts on youth and employment from Ghana, Kenya, Mali, and Colombia met on Saturday, during the annual Spring Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, to discuss ways to alleviate the growing problem of youth unemployment in Africa.
The high-level panel, chaired by Africa Region Vice President Obiageli Ezekwesili and moderated by Human Development Sector Director Yaw Ansu, agreed that there are no easy solutions to the problem.
– Youth in urban areas are looking for jobs alongside thousands of others from the same schools, while rural youth are flooding into the cities looking for work, said Sanoussi Toure, the Minister of Finance of Mali. – This is a tragedy. Our policies favor investment in education and training, but this investment has not led to job creation.
Kinuthia Murugu, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Youth and Sports in Kenya, concurred that economic growth does not equal job creation, – which is why we need specific targeted interventions. He noted that Kenya has created a Youth Employment Marshall Plan, which aims to create 500,000 new jobs over the next four years by expanding the number of technical training institutes and subsidizing students, supporting entrepreneurs in rural areas, initiating labor-intensive public works, developing the information and communication technology (ICT) sector, and paying young people to plant trees, through a Trees for Jobs program, to help reverse the effects of deforestation.
In Ghana, the Government has taken a sectoral approach to the problem, said Professor William Ahadzie, Deputy Head of the Centre for Social Policy Studies at the University of Ghana. -We’ve developed a National Youth Employment Program that aims to actively engage youth in productive employment where they are needed – as health extension workers, waste and sanitation workers, teachers, and as paid interns in industry.
The panelist from Colombia, Mauricio Cárdenas, former Minister of Transport and also of Economic Planning, spoke about his efforts to address youth unemployment during Colombia’s economic crisis in the late 1990s, when external shocks drove unemployment from 10 to 20 percent, and youth unemployment to 30 percent. – We tried two different programs,” Mr. Cárdenas said, and then evaluated the results. One program, called Youth in Action, trained young people for the labor market. – We provided three months of classroom training, followed by three months of on-the-job training. We also provided them with income support of $3 per day, which corresponds to the poverty line in Colombia. Under this program, – 80,000 young people were trained, and the evaluations were highly favorable, using different techniques to measure impact.
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