Questioning productivity of Malawian youth The song of youth unemployment in Malawi is an old one. Being the third-world country, where youth should also be the drivers of economy, but the reality still remains that Malawi is continuing to register a greater number of young people who are just staying idle for various reasons, as YOHANE CHIDEYA writes: If there is a word that can describe many young Malawians best, is nothing other than loafers- the situation that has been overwhelmingly increasing like is nobodys business leading to poverty and desperation among the youth. Because of that, many youths are just staying idle. As the result, others have been and are still used as political tools for abusing others, just because they have no any other option for generating income to spend on their daily basic needs. In Malawi every person aged between 10 and 35 is regarded as a youth, thus according to the Youth and Society organization (YAS). Despite these youths constituting over a whooping 60 per cent of the countrys total population, majority of them continue to suffer from social evils of unemployment. According to Charles Kajoloweka, the acting director of the Youth and Society organization (YAS), the rates of unemployment among young Malawians is becoming a serious concern in the way that the rates are still going up instead of going the opposite direction. Our statistics show that in 2008 national youth unemployment rate was at 43.3 per cent, but currently a study we have just conducted recently indicates that the rate has now jumped up to 60 per cent- it’s a huge crisis, he said. Other statistics by YAS suggest that every year 300,000 young people qualify to join the job market. But out of those youths, the industry manages 30,000 only, representing a meager 10 per cent. Chrispine Mphande, a lecturer at the Mzuzu University, says that the rate of youth unemployment in the country is not a crisis but rather a challenge. He says that the lack of relevance in the countrys education curriculum is to blame, because it does not prepare the students to employ themselves upon finishing school, but rather to be employed by somebody, somewhere. First of all we need to revisit our education curriculum, where you will find out that starting from Junior Certificate Education (JCE) all the way to the tertiary level, the students are not equipped with entrepreneurial skills that can enable them to be self-employed after completing their studies. But rather we prepare our children to get employed upon finishing their studies, that’s why they lack creativity to find something to do for themselves. Who started Face book? Is a very young man. But here you will find that after finishing school the youths just sit down waiting for job adverts, explained Mphande. To understand a more liberal picture, consider the 2008 Population and Housing Census (PHC), where the total population of people under the age of 20 was at 7.6 million, contributing to 58 per cent of the total population. If we can defy having even a wider look at the enrolment at the Universities and other public colleges of higher learning, the picture even appears very grim. For instance, the University of Malawi and the Mzuzu University admit less than 3,000 students a year in total. Others end up in the handful technical colleges and in the expensive private colleges. But worst still, many are just idling at home, doing nothing. Very recently in 2013, the University of Malawi (Unima) and the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR) enrolled only 1,909 students, despite having 10,328 students in total who qualified for the places due to limited capacity at the colleges. That is an issue to do with population against resources now, because the countrys population is on the rise but the number of colleges is the same, thats the problem. The government promised to construct six universities, where are they? It means that someone is sitting on them and these are the kind of issues that we have to follow, added Mphande. Mphande also expressed concerns about some job advertisements that give scarily descriptions that they need people with many years of experience to take the positions, giving a horrific scare to those who are just finishing their studies. In many cases you may see job advertisements that need somebody with 10 years work experience. So you turn to wonder, where is a graduate expected to get the experience from, its tricky, wondered Mphande. As one way of arresting the crisis of unemployment among the youth, government introduced a number of policies; the Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDEF) under the youth loan scheme; Technical and Vocational Entrepreneurship Training (TEVET) under the vocational skills and development; and as of late, the youth labour export (South Korea an Dubai) among others. But sadly, all these implementations have been facing unexplainable stumbling blocks as other policies are criticized for being politicized, for example the YEDEF, where others have expressed their complaints that the youth who benefit from it only supporters of particular parties. The vocational training institutions in the country have their own mysteries. Miss Conceptor Bamusi, Technical and Vocational Training Authority (TEVETA) regional officer for the north also utters her concerns on the matter of youth unemployment in the country. She says that the shortage in the number of institutions that provide vocation and entrepreneurial skills to many youths are minimal, and that is their biggest challenge. Its really worrisome, imagine in the whole northern region, there are only two colleges; the Mzuzu Technical College and the university of Livingstonia, which are not enough considering the population of youth here in the north. But at TEVETA we are trying our level best to set goals to increase access to youths in the country, Bamusi said. But after everything else is said and done, one could ask what could be the possible way forward in combating the ever rising rate of youth unemployment in Malawi? We need to review the YEDEF program so that each and every youth should benefit from if. In addition to that, there is also the need to construct many universities, demand the curriculum review, as well as demanding that entrepreneurship should become the compulsory subject to equip our young people with entrepreneurial skills to be self-reliable. They should not always be eager to just wait for collar jobs, because it is not easy to get those kinds of jobs, explained Tiyane Nyirenda of Africa Enterprise Mission, adding, The conduct of some university students as well has to be dealt with, if we want our youths to be reliable future decision makers. So they must be discipline at all times. He also says that there is also a need to encourage industries to cope up with the education institutions, so that students should be equipped with some working skills. Take it or leave it, but the current situation engenders a fertile environment for all social problems if not dealt with. 50 years of independence will grow into 100 years of lost time and of no-hoper.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 07:43:23 +0000