Inside Shs139m project to tackle unemployment

Observers say this indicates that while general youth unemployment rates are relatively low, university graduates face significant challenges in securing employment. This, they added, suggests a potential mismatch between educational outcomes and labour market demands.

Consequently, MakRIF’s project titled “Tackling Youth Unemployment: Aligning University Training to Industry Skills Demand through a University-Industry Collaboration Model” seeks to narrow this gap by improving the collaboration between both institutions. It is being driven by Makerere University, Makerere University Business School (Mubs), National Planning Authority (NPA), the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE), and the National Curriculum Development Centre-Uganda (NCDC), among other institutions.

The project team includes Makerere University Associate Professor, Dr Annabella Habinka, who is the Principal Investigator; Ms Barbara Kayondo, a lecturer in the department of Information Systems at MUBS (Co-Principal Investigator); Manager of Policy Research and Innovation at NPA, Dr Hamis Mugendawala (researcher); and Dr Godfrey Onyait from the NCHE (researcher).

Others are Mr Moses Muhame from NCDC (Project Coordinator); Dr Robert Muwanga and Dr John Paul Kasse, both researchers from Mubs, and Ms Olive Kyogabirwe, a researcher from Dt Peter’s Secondary School, Naalya, among others.

Inception

Dr Habinka says in justifying the problem, MakRIF quantified how big the unemployment burden is, the role of education, and relevance of the industry in churning out graduates who finish studies with relevant skills that can match the employment gap. The study partly involved tracking the number of students who enrolled for Primary One in 2007 and finally graduated in that cohort, where it was revealed that only six percent of those managed to reach Senior Six, while 94 percent dropped out along the way.

“The dropouts may have gone to Business, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (BTVET) institutions or elsewhere; however, our big issue is how many of the six percent that go to university actually get jobs?” Dr Habinka asked during dissemination of the findings in Kampala on Wednesday.

She added: “We have received the numbers, got lots of feedback and from the study, we have been able to see what our key core model is, and one of the findings that we picked up is that the industry, in partnership with universities, is extremely very important.

“Before, universities have been reaching out to industries; however, this new model proposes a swap such that industries take the lead in identifying and realigning with the universities and focus the agenda towards unemployment and remaining relevant.”

ICT, business graduates

In this study, Dr Habinka says they had a specific focus on mainly business and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) because they are our areas of competence and most popular courses with the highest numbers across the entire country.

“We focused on business (92 respondents) and ICT (212 respondents) because these are the most desired skills. Makerere University, MUBS and all other universities have these graduates; however, they are the most unemployed in the country.

“This is because of career guidance after parents sent it to them as third, fourth or fifth choice after the marks didn’t come out well. It is possible to stop training some of these courses over the next ten years and we lose nothing,” says Dr Habinka.

Recommendations

The project recommends the establishment of formal communication channels between universities and industry, including web portals, forums, and liaison offices. These, it adds, should be located within universities, ensure continuous and structured dialogue between academic institutions and industry stakeholders, and create industry-academia liaison positions.

Also, universities and industries should establish dedicated liaison positions such as industry relations officers who are responsible for managing collaborations, guiding curriculum development, and identifying funding opportunities.

The project also calls for the Introduction of internship and apprenticeship programmes, and the developing of policy frameworks where students can gain real-world experience while contributing to solving industry problems.

On her part, Dr Habinka recommends a systematic and comprehensive way of career guidance from grassroot (Nursery) level, and urges parents to desist from the mantra that because they are doctors or engineers, their child must be one. She adds that the industry gap should be narrowed by giving the industry an opportunity to give academia a lead, especially on what their gaps are, and fund them so that they come up with what they are able to do.

This model, Dr Habinka reckons, will save our students from ‘guessing problems’ while out there and instead seek those that are driven by industry. “Our aim is to disseminate part of our findings from the community to come up with a multi-disciplinary solution which we can propose to policy and industry.”

She notes that holders of Masters Degrees are many compared to skills; yet Uganda is not even a First-Class country.

“China and the United States have less than 33 percent degree holders, but they are leading us, meaning there is something we are lacking. What are they doing differently that we need to learn from? What are our most needed skills in the next 20 to 30 years?

“We should be at a point where we get our students booked by the labour market during the second semester of their second year,” she further explained.

Leveraging tech

Ms Kayondo says the project proposes a technology-enabled model that will bridge the communication gap between industry and academia.

“Kyambogo is graduating this week and Makerere University will be graduating in January. There are so many (graduates), but they are not fed into the market. The question is, ‘are we producing graduates that are tailored for the market’?”

“We are simply saying, how can these two communicate? How can the industry reach out to the academia to communicate and the reverse such that we produce people that are skilled? There is a course where we got statistics which show that even in the next ten years, we don’t need graduates from that course,” Ms Kayondo explained.

Dr Mugendawala says most universities are surrounded by the poorest communities and slums. “Makerere and Kyambogo Universities, for example, have a significant disconnect with their communities which live with many problems they can’t solve; so, there is a need to open up communication channels,” he says.

He adds that every year, one million young people of working age flood the labour market, including 50,000 graduates, yet the country can only have about 300,000 every year whose characteristics are at the level of “construct and repair.”

“We are having people who do not fit in the structure of the economy, and where someone with two degrees accepts to ride a motorcycle (boda boda). Did it require two degrees for them to ride a motorcycle?” he asks.

Methodology

At least 358 respondents in Kampala, Jinja, Mbale, Wakiso, and Mityana were subjected to surveys and interviews during the research which started in February and will end this month.

The respondents included students from Makerere University (98), MUBS (206), who included 129 male and 175 female; lecturers, researchers, Heads of Departments, Deans, Project Managers, Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) or Managing Directors, Human Resource Managers, District Labour Officers, District Commercial Officers and District ICT Officers.

Others were drawn from the NCHE, NPA, agricultural farms, hotels, factories, Ministries of ICT; Gender, Labour and Social Development; and Local Government.

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