Skill the youth or brace for harder times ahead

Recently, the Daily Monitor ran a story on the high levels of school dropouts. This story surprised many people. However, it told of one part of the human resource problem we are facing as a country. First, no country can develop without a skilled workforce. All poor countries around the world share one thing in common: an unskilled workforce.

As for Uganda, projections indicate that by 2044, the country will have about 74 million people. This is about 20 years from now. During these 20 years, nearly 40 million children will join primary one. Going by the current statistics, only 14 million of these will complete Primary Seven.

Thus, unless we do something drastic, the country will have an additional 30 million people without a PLE certificate. Such a scenario means Uganda is poised to have a huge chunk of uneducated and unskilled youth. If we assume that that the 14 million will complete Primary Seven, still just a handful will reach high school.

This is based on the current evidence, which shows that only about 14 percent of Ugandan youth have post-secondary education. One would expect that this group is fairly educated and skilled. However, a 2022 study by Mutenyo, Buyinza, Ssenono and Asiimwe indicates that educated youth in Uganda actually lack skills. Another study by conducted by Egessa, Nnyanzi, and Muwanga in 2021 found that in Uganda, the more educated one is, the more unemployed they are likely to be.

In part, this is because the educated skills lack the requisite skills. Studies indicate that Ugandan youth make an important contribution to the economy only when they are trained and skilled. Thus, when unskilled, their contribution to the economy is insignificant. Therefore, when you have a bulk of youth without education and skill, you are likely to have a group of people who do not contribute to the economy of the country.

Quite interestingly, while the female youth are the least skilled and lowest paid, when skilled, they add more value to the economy through tourism than their male counterparts. This suggests that efforts to skill the young women can have far reaching consequences for households and the economy of Uganda. Sadly, the skilled female youth are the fewest in Uganda. The Daily Monitor story further indicates that youth unemployment is a major problem.

A synthesis of several studies shows that youth unemployment in Uganda emanates from a range of factors linked to lack of education and training, socio-cultural biases and lack of access to affordable financing. Majority of Ugandan youth lack technical, business and soft skills. These deficiencies are linked to a weak education system, which creates mismatches between the youth skills and labour market needs. The knowledge acquired in schools is generally considered theoretical and less relevant for small-scale businesses. Some business training programmes have been designed but majority of them are based on large firm practices which are not applicable to micro and small-scale businesses. Thus, there is a shortage of a proper skills development mechanism for the Ugandan youth.

As for the female youth, gender significantly constrains young women’s ability to take up opportunities. Society attaches certain roles to specific gender types, in many cases relegating women to less commercially profitable roles. These gender stereotypes cause endemic biases in employment, social support for self-employment and access to finance. Consequently, up to 72 percent of Ugandan young women are not in paid employment and suffer from poverty feminization. By virtue of being female, young women tend to have higher unemployment rates. Society assigns them tedious, non-remunerative and low status roles which contribute the least to their economic empowerment.

They fail to transition into work, and remain unemployed, underemployed or reliant on casual work. For those that attempt self-employment, majority of them lack the training and skills to run successful enterprises.

The youth often fail to meet the compliance costs by both formal and informal institutions as they do not own property which can serve as collateral. Worse, their enterprises are rarely attractive to funders. In the end, majority of youth enterprises suffer the highest mortality rates. My argument is that Uganda needs to support the youth to be productive. This is the only way this country will move for The support is needed in the form of vocational, business and soft skilling, youth socio-cultural empowerment, and tailored financing for their enterprises.

Celestine Katongole,