Private sector-led skilling good for youth

Uganda on August 12 joined the rest of the world to commemorate International Youth Day under the theme: ‘Youth Engagement for Global Action.’

In a fast changing world where humankind face a lot of challenges, including environment preservation, human rights, peace and security, and growing inequality, among others, there is an urgent need to promote equal opportunities and to engage the youth as a key determinant of their own future.

Youth should be enabled from the very beginning, starting at home and in schools, to become part of this broader debate. Equipping youth with labour market-relevant skills is a strategic way of ensuring that they are meaningfully engaged, and listened to.

It is estimated that 600,000 Ugandans enter the job market every year to compete for only 90,000 jobs. The biggest percentage of these are youth. Up to 78 per cent of the country’s population is below 30 years.

Such a population potentially offers Uganda the demographic dividend the country very much needs to become a middle income status country. However, if not nurtured properly, it might be a source of several negative consequences such as low self-esteem, criminality, substance abuse and gender-based violence.

While the youth unemployment level remains high, employers complain about the lack of appropriately skilled labour. Moreover, Ugandan learning institutions, including universities, churn out thousands of graduates every year. Only a handful of them, according to various studies, get a job or start sustainable income generating activities.

Despite Uganda once getting ranked as the world’s most entrepreneurial country, most businesses do not live to celebrate their first birthday. This is partly attributed to inappropriate skilling.

The education sector, should now more than ever, involve the private sector in skills development, if the country is to address the mismatch between skills provided by training institutions and the needs of the labour market. Uganda must switch to private sector-led skills development to tackle the mismatch and efficiently address youth unemployment.

The Ministry of Education should be commended for the Skilling Uganda programme, now called the “BTVET Strategic Policy.” It hopes to achieve a paradigm shift in skills development by making training responsive to the needs of the labour market. This should be actualised by putting it in practice.

Employers will play a key role in achieving the aspirations of this policy. Learners as part of their training, should be placed in private sector companies to learn workplace competencies. This shouldn’t be limited to acquisition of practical skills. Soft skills such as emotional intelligence, time management, working within deadlines, are equally important. Recent studies have found that Uganda’s graduates are lacking in such competencies, yet employers find them absolutely important.

Some changes should, however, be made to make internship worthwhile. Work-based learning must professionally build a learner. It is only effective when properly planned, documented, deliberate, has clear learning deliverables and a superviser/mentor assigned to a learner. The private sector has the capacity to offer this, provided there are clear mechanisms in place.

Work based learning offers learners the opportunity to acquire skills that may not be got in class, including those resulting from technological changes. Education institutions are usually slow to updating their curriculum so that new developments are timely adopted.

Christelle Jocquet,
Kampala