The Chairman of the African Business Centre for Developing Education (ABCDE), Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, has asked the youth to harness their talents and acquire skills rather than depend on the government to provide them jobs.
According to him, the over-dependence of Ghana’s youth on government jobs is what has led to the high rate of unemployment in the country. Dr. Spio-Garbrah, who is a former Minister for Education, said youth unemployment can be reduced when young persons focus on skill acquisition and development of talents for a living.
Speaking to Class FM on the sidelines of a forum organised by ABCDE on the theme: ‘Corporate Support For Educational Initiatives in the COVID-19 Environment’, the former Trade and Industry Minister said: “It’s easy to underestimate the value of the importance of numerous skills.”
“There are so many avenues now for young people to make a living so there is no need for anybody to sit on their oars and bemoan the fact that they don’t have employment because they want the government or a big company to give employment to them but what about their talents. You have to look at yourself and God-given abilities and do something with it,” the former Ambassador to the United States and President of Dominion University stated.
He continued: “Recent history has seen graduates of all forms, either picketing or demonstrating in a bid to get the government to provide them jobs. This has resulted in frustrated graduates waiting in vain for years for jobs that never seem to come. Skills like refrigeration and automotive and so many products that the youth of today can also master”.
Re-echoing Dr. Spio-Garbrah, an Afrobarometer survey has revealed that education and unemployment are the most important problems the youth in the country want the government to address. The Round 8 survey, conducted in late 2019, found that job creation and education are also the citizens’ top priorities for additional government investment in youth development, and citizens are willing to pay more taxes to support programs to help young people.
When Afrobarometer asked adults of all ages to cite the most important problems they want the government to address, infrastructure/roads was the most frequently cited priority (mentioned by 59% of respondents), followed by unemployment (39%) and education (38%) (Figure 1).
However, unemployment and education are the most important problems that young Ghanaians (aged 18-35 years) want the government to address. Young adults are 14 and 5 percentage points, respectively, more likely than seniors to cite unemployment and education as their top priorities.
The unemployment rate in Ghana is expected to reach 7.30 per cent by the end of 2020, according to Trading Economics global macro models and analysts’ expectations.
In the long-term, the country’s unemployment rate is projected to trend around 7.50 per cent in 2021 and 7.70 per cent in 2022.
The Chief Executive of I-ZAR Group of Companies, Rashida Saani Nasamu, who also spoke at the forum, encouraged the youth to take their destinies into their own hands.
She said: “I think it is very important to appreciate the fact that the government will never be able to say our initiatives are going to be able to employ or admit every single youth of the country. It’s high time we know that taking the bull by their horn and creating employable initiatives for ourselves is very important. Education leads to skills acquisition, skill acquisition leads to a daily bread, which is supposed to be an entrepreneurial adventure”.
Other speakers at the forum include Mr Torgbor Mensah, Chairman, The Great Argon Holdings; Mr Mukesh Thakwani, Chairman/Founder, B5 Steel Industry; and Alhaji Salamu Amadu, Chairman of Afro Arab Group of Companies.
