The magnitude of youth unemployment is so huge, the an analysis made by Policy Forum shows that in Africa, 10 to 12 million youth enter the workforce each year although only 3 million formal jobs are created. According to ILO due to COVID-19 pandemic there is a loss of 305 million full time jobs.
Adv. Dominic Ndunguru, executive director at Open Mind Tanzania (OMT) who was a presenter during the breakfast debate with discussion around youth unemployment. He gave an overview on the situation of unemployment in Tanzania, shown the government initiative from the national budget and recommendations that will help to curb the issue of unemployment in Tanzania.
Values and negatives attitude of adults against young people, that youth are perceived as a problem rather than active population capable of contributing on productive community. He added the issue of rare skills recogniztion, for example Djs and MCs are not recognized by Technical and Vocation Education Training (TVET) as formal jobs but they employ alot of youth.
Adv. Dominic Nduguru, Executive Director of Open Mind Tanzania (OMT) expressed that, through the Local Government Finance Act, 2018 the government came up with a commendable law that emphasizes economic empowerment to address unemployment through access to loans to vulnerable groups to eradicate poverty, formalization of the informal sector and investment on human resource developement from the Five Years Development plan and initiate special programs at TVETs.
In addition, Ndidi Tumpe was one of the discussant, a loan officer from Temeke Municipal, highlighted the opportunity found from the PO-RALG has revised the implementation guidelines for the empowerment of 10% of local council revenue, by reducing number of group members from 10 people to 5 members. The side of people with disability can be composed with atleast 2 people. More over provisoin of entrepreneurship trainings,leadership, financial management and reporting.
Youth officer from Restless development, Reuben Chacha was the second discussant, who highlighted on CSOs contribution in embarking the challenge of youth unemployment. Restless development has initiated employability skills development projects that covers five regions to equip young people with the right skills that are needed to serve the labor market.
It is for the youth now to take the opportunities form the trainings and different initiatives offered by the government and organizations and initiate them to their projects or business to curb the issue of unemployment
