Youth Unemployment and Entrepreneurship

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The recent global financial crisis which broke out in 2008 saw both the developed and developing economies collapsing with most governments having to bail out giant corporations. At this moment in time, most economies are going through the global economic recovery, which it going at a slow pace. The Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the economies that have been enjoying visible and vigorous economic growth but just like other economies, it is faced with many challenges that resulted from the recession and one issue that is more concern is the escalation of unemployment - youth unemployment in particular. The uneven economic recovery has so far proven to be a jobless one.

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO) in its recently published Global Employment Trends for Youth 2014 report, almost 202 million people around the world were unemployment in 2013 – with an increase of almost 5 million compared to the previous year.

ILO projects that if the nothing is done to alleviate the situation, global unemployment will eventually reach more than 215 million people by the year 2018. On annual basis, 42.6 million people around the globe enter the labour market but ILO estimated that only 40 million new jobs will be created annually.

Not only are the youth facing the challenge of unemployment but also the disparity between their skills and employability has widened. On annual basis, more and more youth graduate to join the employment market but are equipped with mismatched skills and therefore rendering them unemployable.

This is not a government-only issue; government, societies and private entities need to come together and find a way to mend the torn blanket. This is a challenge that need all stakeholders to form a coalition that will work towards tackling this issue. It is high time youth are reskilled in order to meet the current market needs – entrepreneurship mentality needs to instilled in the youth at tend age so as assist them to be less dependent on the government to prove them with jobs. This will play a crucial role in reducing the unemployment rate as job seekers will turn into job creators.

Youth entrepreneurship as the solution

Entrepreneurship is about curving paths and discovering opportunities where others find and see nothing. It is about selling products and/or service to others at a future point and making them believe/realise they needed it. Entrepreneurship is simply a character that is born with a person; the spirit of survival and therefore, not everyone is born an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs create employment for their fellow human beings and as such, they are the solution to high rate of unemployment. It is basically impossible to create or sustain jobs without entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship has proven to be key instrument and valuable strategy for boosting job creation and improving youth’s livelihoods and economic independence. Even though many countries are aware of the importance of youth entrepreneurship, there has been little effort, if any, to view entrepreneurship from the youth’s perspective; the youth’s economic and social contribution has been underrated and unutilised. Youth needs to be integrated into labour markets and their entrepreneurial potential should be utilised and maximised in order to lessen the persistently high global youth unemployment.

The normal guaranteed job-for-life career paths are disappearing on daily basis and many youth are aware of the shift in policy and such, they are now involved in informal economy and have created employment through micro entrepreneurism and self-employment to generate income and improving their livelihood and therefore reducing the dependence on the government and overcoming poverty.

Many actions need to be taken by nations to bring to a halt elements that accelerate worldwide youth unemployment and the recovery of labour markets:

• Entrepreneurship spirit needs to be promoted at schools;
• Governments should provide conducive environment for the aspiring entrepreneurs such as providing youth entrepreneurs with incubators;
• Financial awareness should be taught at schools in order to teach the youth the value of money and the importance of investing it;
• Financial institutions should make it easy for youth entrepreneurs to access funds;
• Governments should encourage angel investors and crowd-funding methods and also allocate funds to support programmes that promote entrepreneurship amongst the youth;
• Academia should encourage innovation and creativity in their students;
• Policy makers need to put conducive labour market policies into place in order to alleviate the unemployment challenge such as supporting informal employment and turning them into formal structures.