Three-pronged approach can tackle unemployment

May 29, 2011

FOR many years the writing on the wall has been loud and clear that the unemployed youth would, in good time, present a serious problem to this country.

Gordon Mwesigye

FOR many years the writing on the wall has been loud and clear that the unemployed youth would, in good time, present a serious problem to this country.

Unemployed youth are now being targeted by some politicians for their own selfish ends.

Whenever you pass anywhere in our trading centres you come across scores of youth playing cards or ‘mweso’ and others in video halls. Few would be in their gardens. Instead the gardens have been left for the elderly. This pattern is more pronounced in the central region. This pattern worried me to the extent that I shared my concern with the then Katikkiro Joseph Mulwanyamuli Semwogerere.

My concern then, as is now, was that the youth are shunning agriculture and leaving it to very old people who soon will no longer be strong enough to till the land. When that happens, hunger will set in as all the youth flock into towns, this time not only to look for employment, but for food as well. Mulwanyamuli promised the matter was going to be handled. I do not know whether he or his Lukiiko sorted the problem.

We have seen attempts at empowering the youth though provision of loans to buy motorcycles (boda boda). While this policy appears to address the problem, it only addresses the problem of the youth in urban areas and is not sustainable.

Besides, how many boda bodas can you buy in both the rural and urban areas before you choke the roads completely. Besides, boda bodas that have not been regulated are adding to the lawlessness that is slowly eating up the country.

Since we all know that youth unemployment is a time bomb, why is it we have not addressed the issue in a more fundamental way? Is it that we do not appreciate the problem or are we simply too lazy to tackle the problem?

I wish to share my thoughts about how this problem can be addressed. In my view there are three areas that we could address to tackle youth unemployment. These are:-

Public works
There are many roundabouts, bridges, railways that need to be worked on. Some of these need rehabilitation only, like in the case of the railways.

Instead of contracting such work to private companies, whose interest is to maximise profits, it is time to consider a labour-intensive approach to effect these public projects and programmes.

This means there is need to rethink how a labour-intensive approach can be accommodated by private enterprises such that they employ as many people as possible.

This country has many trained engineers and many more are coming out of our universities, but most of them get jobs abroad because there are few opportunities in Uganda. We certainly do not lack skilled labour. What we need is for the Government to seriously look at ways of ensuring private firms employ Ugandans.

In doing this Uganda will not have been the first country to do so. Immediately after World War II many countries in Europe had to go this route to keep the millions of demobilised troops employed.

Agriculture
At the moment agriculture employs between 70% to 80% of our labour force. Agriculture, however, is not attracting the youth because they do not see ready cash in it. The Government needs to introduce big irrigation schemes where the youth will be employed. This way they will be given a chance to acquire more skills. They will also appreciate that agriculture can be a paying enterprise. For agriculture to be paying, however, marketing of the farm produce needs to be addressed. Time has come for marketing of farm produce to be addressed so that middlemen who make huge profits at the expense of the farmer are eliminated.

Equally important is the reestablishment of silos for grain storage. In a country where nature has been so generous there is no reason why food prices should not be affordable by all at all times.


  • Establishment of trade schools
    We need to establish more techinical and trade schools so that they absorb as many youth as possible. The youth need to go into these trade schools knowing that at the end of training they will be employing themselves. For this to work, the Government needs to create a fund to provide capital for those who complete the trade schools so that they can start their businesses.

    This capital would be in loan form and whoever received it would have to pay it back. I know technical and trade schools exist at the moment, but they are too few and most teach carpentry. We, therefore, need to increase such schools and also increase on the variety of disciplines taught. This is one certain way of reducing on the youth unemployment in a more sustainable way.

    Lastly, the Government needs to address the problem of population explosion. I know there are arguments for and against rapid population increase.

    However, what should be at the back of our mind is whether the economy can sustain these numbers of young people who do not contribute to the economy.

    Secondly, the Government needs to ask itself why those countries that have grown massive populations are now striving to slow down on their birth rate.

    The author is Secretary Uganda Human Rights Commission and former Town Clerk of Kampala

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