Tackling urban youth unemployment in Zimbabwe

Opinion by Antony Jongwe

In this instalment, I return to a subject which is exceedingly dear to my heart and this is youth development and empowerment. Over the past decade, I have been privileged to work with various youth groups in various set-ups.

My previous work experience in a university as a student affairs practitioner illuminated my understanding of the challenges faced by youth in tertiary institutions. Later on, working as a consultant, particularly with the Zimbabwe Youth Council gave me useful insights into the key issues confronting our youth at a national level.

This knowledge has been deepened through on-going focused doctoral research work exploring the entrepreneurial potential amongst youth in Zimbabwe.

Off-course, this knowledge is also buttressed by my own lifelong experiences growing up as a youth in post-independent Zimbabwe. I recount my university days in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I used to be a non-resident student and living in Kuwadzana. As youth then, we had aspirations most of which are equally identifiable with today’s youth.

Then, we looked forward to high-paying jobs after graduating from university and living a really good life. In my day-to-day interactions with my own children who can be classified as modern-day youth and their friends, I notice that today’s youth want the same things as we did growing up back then. The biggest concern that I pick from them is the lack of jobs and this has sort of become a global issue.

A critical element of the current global job crisis is the struggle of young people to enter in the labour market. Young people are three times more likely than adults to be out of a job. For those who have a job, the quality of the job is another issue. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates, of the total 200 million unemployed worldwide, 75 million or around 40 per cent are young people.

If the estimated 152 million young people living on less than US$1, 25 per day were added, the number of youth in extremely vulnerable situation would be 225 million. This has created a renewed sense of urgency for action. Youth unemployment is reaching unprecedented proportions globally. Between 2007 and 2010, youth unemployment increased by 5, 1 million and this year alone (2012) four out of ten unemployed was a young woman or man (ILO, 2012)

A Concept Note addressing the Youth Unemployment Challenge in Africa (ACBF, 2011) outlines the magnitude of youth unemployment on the African continent: “The incidence of youth unemployment in sub- Saharan African is estimated to be over 20 percent. It is also estimated that about 133 million youth (more than 50 percent of the youth population) in Africa are illiterate,” ACBF said.

According to the 2010 Africa Economic Outlook more than 60 percent of Africa’s population is under the age of 25 and this is expected to increase to 75 percent by 2015. Africa will also account for 29 percent of the world’s population aged 15-24 by 2050, up from nine percent in 1950, according to United Nations population figures.

About 7, 2 percent of Africa’s youths are unemployed and an additional 46, 9 percent are underemployed or inactive, as reported by the ILO. The United Nations estimates that of the world’s one billion youths, about 850 million of them live in developing countries. These are generally countries with weak economies characterised by low levels of economic growth and pervasive poverty which make it difficult for them to create equal opportunities for all social groups.

This means that developing countries, particularly African countries, have a bigger problem of youth unemployment than the developed world (April, 2009; Jongwe, 2011). Unlike other developing regions, sub-Saharan Africa’s population is becoming more youthful, with youth as a proportion of the total population projected at over 75 percent by 2015, due to the high fertility rate underlying the demographic momentum (ACBF, 2011:p.1)

Consistent with the foregoing, the Ministry of Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment has through the Zimbabwe Youth Council (ZYC) Three-Year Strategic Plan covering the period 2010-2012, which this writer facilitated, spelt clearly the need to create ‘youth empowerment programmes’ for the youths of Zimbabwe. Entrepreneurship represents an attractive route for achieving this in Zimbabwe.

Unemployment among youth and university graduates is a serious and growing social, economic and political problem in Zimbabwe and the country needs to start paying greater attention to the matter (NANGO, 2011). Future instalments will explore what I consider to be effective responses to youth unemployment based on the Jongwe Model for Social Entrepreneurship (2012) which is a major output of my research work. However, in the interim I examine the conventional responses being proffered on the subject matter.

At policy level, government needs to tackle youth unemployment as a matter of urgency failing which it remains a significant political risk. Historically, many governments have conceived sound programmes to deal with youth unemployment and the New Deal launched by US President Franklin D Roosevelt provides some of these. However, the most plausible approach revolves around youth empowerment through small businesses.

In my view, the much-maligned indigenisation and economic empowerment programme provides an opportunity for youths to start small businesses which supply goods and services to existing large corporates as well as creating small businesses which support the thrust on intermediation or value-addition. While there have been legitimate concerns regarding the disbursement of the Youth Fund, it is indisputable that such funding goes a long way in kick-starting youth entrepreneurship and needs to be scaled up going forward on a non-partisanship basis.

The services sector, particularly ICTs and Tourism (including indigenous/cultural tourism) represents an attractive route for youth-run small businesses. There also remains an untapped opportunity in social entrepreneurship amongst our youths. We need social entrepreneurs in emergent social issues such as climate change, the environment and even human rights.

Another area is that of indigenous entrepreneurship which leverages on indigenous knowledge systems to address some of the common developmental problems faced by a country like Zimbabwe. The very high unemployment in the economy discounts the risk of leaving secure employment to start a new business. There exists a right environment in the Zimbabwe right now to unleash an entrepreneurial tsunami but the finance side needs some urgent remedial action. The Small Enterprise Development Corporation (SEDCO) needs to be revamped along the lines of the Small Businesses Administration (SBA) in the USA so that it is able to guarantee loans available for entrepreneurship.

The government needs to create productive credit in the economy to ensure that those with the “hunter spirit” or “shavi reuvhimi/amajikwa” (Mbigi, 1997:32) (an indigenous or African version of entrepreneurship) are able to do just that.  Zimbabwe also needs to review its insolvency/bankruptcy laws to ensure that they do not punish people who fail in business but actually encourage a healthy dose of risk-taking. South Africa has come up with a fund which is targeting youth start-ups.

Our curriculum has, until recently, been leaning heavily on white-collar employment. Fortunately, our institutions have seen the need to mainstream entrepreneurship in their various programmes. In Zimbabwe, we need to create a culture of entrepreneurship by encouraging risk-taking and tolerating failure as a necessary ingredient of success. Our MBA graduates, apart from being organisational entrepreneurs also need to become start-up entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs.

Anthony Jongwe is aspiring MP for Kuwadzana Constituency and can be contacted via e-mail [email protected]