African youth need trade skills not university degrees

An International Conference on Putting Youth to Work is underway in Dakar, Senegal until 30 January 2014. The event has been organized by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in partnership with the Partnership for Economic Policy. It is meant to be a platform for sharing ideas towards solutions to Africa’s predicament of mass youth unemployment.

It has been reported that 83 percent of the unemployed in Uganda are youth; the figures in Zimbabwe and Senegal stand at 68 and 56 percent respectively.

Youth unemployment is not unique to Africa. Western Europe and other parts of the world are in difficult circumstances as well. In the UK, it has been found that half of the parents are in the dark about their children’s career options.

In a survey done by Ernst and Young in the UK, it was found that parents and employers had different perceptions about the value of going to university. While parents valued a university qualification, employers were more interested in work experience. In the OECD’s Africa Economic Outlook 2012 Report focusing on youth employment, it was noted that though schools and institutions of higher learning in most African countries are not providing young people with the skills employers are looking for, a bigger problem is the low demand for labour.

Instead of going sheepishly following everyone spending money on university programs that lead into the unemployment abyss, let us encourage young African men and women to look for trade skills that give them power to work with their head and hands and offer high quality services that we need every day (vehicle, power installation repairs, plumbing, fabrication, computer software solutions, etc). Charles Handy called it portfolio work.