Restless in Africa

Youth unemployment is the biggest challenge Africa faces today. It was the restlessness among youth, caused by immense poverty and unemployment, that resulted in the Arab Spring and the recent attacks on foreigners in South Africa.

Only 51 per cent of 15 to 24 year-olds have wage-earning jobs, making underemployment, vulnerable employment and working poverty widespread inAfrican countries.

Skill demand A World Bank report on ‘Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa’ states that 11 million young people are expected to enter the job market each year over the next decade. Africa has almost 200 million people aged between 15 and 24. But governments and enterprises have failed to provide enough job opportunities despite the fact that African economies have grown well in recent years. In absolute numbers, while the working-age population grew by 96 million, the number of jobs grew only by 63 million in Africa, according to ILO estimates.

Sounds familiar? No surprises there. India has been grappling with youth unemployment and illiteracy for a long time now. While the subcontinent doesn’t have to deal with the kind of armed conflicts that haunt Africa, youth unemployment has led to issues such as increased Naxalite influence in some States and a surge in crime. Over 13 million Indian youth enter the job market each year, yet there are not enough job opportunities. Nearly 75 per cent of Indian graduates are considered ‘unemployable’ by companies due to a lack of the right skill sets.

Ironically, nowhere are skills more in demand than in emerging economies, according to a human capital study by PwC. Changing economic models in developing countries (from agrarian to knowledge-based, and moving away from cheap labour-fuelled export economy) have made skills a pre-requisite for growth.

India and Africa face similar circumstances and nowhere is this more visible than in youth unemployment and related challenges. Unequal growth and distribution of education, healthcare and employment opportunities has led to massive immigration from rural areas to urban centres; illiteracy is widespread and youth unemployment increasing.

Need joint efforts Africa has much to gain from collaborating with India and emulating India’s skilling programme to empower its youth with employable skill sets.

India has been very successful in recognising these challenges and addressing it on a war footing.

The Indian government has set a target of skilling 500 million youth by 2022 and it has successfully tied up with the private sector to meet this goal.

This effort clearly proves that tackling youth employment is not a unidimensional challenge. It needs governments, private enterprises, industry and academia to join hands and work at the grassroots level. This is particularly true in the African context.

Whether it is India or Africa, no longer can these economies afford to be looked on as factories of cheap labour. The need of the hour is to become talent hubs for building knowledge economies.

A piece of research by PwC showed that business leaders are more concerned today than ever about being able to find the right people. Nearly 96 per cent of the CEOs in Africa and 87 per cent in South Africa were concerned about lack of skills, with technology and engineering firms struggling the most.

India is already actively engaged through its flagship programme, India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS), in economic development, human resources development, capacity building, agriculture and food processing, infrastructure development and maritime security.

Promoting collaboration of academia between India and Africa to build capacity through education, vocational and skills training will help bridge the work-employable skills gap.

In India, the private sector has become an active participant in resolving skilling challenges, whether it is through industry-driven curriculum, sponsorship or setting up centres of excellence (CoE).

Africa’s informal skills training sector is poorly equipped, while the education system has marginalised skills development and vocational training.

Having the industry set up sector-specific CoEs that will provide ‘on-the-job’ training, while still studying can be a way of approaching the skilling challenge.

The writer is the CEO and director of Centum Learning, a corporate training firm

COMMENT NOW