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The Director of Democracy Project, Dr John Osae-Kwapong, has challenged presidential candidates to treat the problem of youth unemployment with the urgency it deserves.
He said it was undoubtedly clear that Ghanaian youth found themselves in economically challenging times and the unemployment issue must be treated with urgency.
“We must also realise that addressing unemployment cannot be decoupled from proper management of the economy,” he stated.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic, Dr Osae-Kwapong said whether it had been clearly spelt out in the political party manifestos for the 2024 elections or through campaign stump speeches, presidential candidates were proposing ideas and making promises about job creation including how to address the country’s economic challenges.
“To what extent will these ideas and proposals truly address the unemployment headaches facing the youth? It is difficult to answer definitively but some of the proposals on the table do hold promise if they are successfully implemented,” he stated.
Putting the problem of youth employment in context, Dr Osae-Kwapong said when asked in Afrobarometer Round 8 in 2019, which areas the government should prioritise if there was an opportunity to spend on programmes to help the youth, 60 per cent answered “job creation.”
“In Afrobarometer Round 9 (2022) of the 26 issues identified as important problems for the government to address, two emerged as critical for the youth.
Those he said, were the management of the economy and unemployment.
Dr Osae-Kwapong said when asked how well the government was handling both, only 14 per cent rated the government’s efforts well on job creation and another 16 per cent, its efforts on managing the economy.
“The last point worth noting is the economic pinch points the youth expressed in Afrobarometer Round nine in 2022,” he observed.
He said 70 per cent described their living conditions as fairly bad/very bad; 58 per cent said they had gone without cash income at least more than once over a twelve-month period; and only 23 per cent were optimistic that the country’s economic conditions would get better.
Dr Osae-Kwapong said if the unemployment situation facing the youth was the lack of employable skills, then ideas such as building the digital skills of the youth, and increased investment in Technical and Vocational Training (TVET), which was featured across party manifestos, were worth trying.
“If the unemployment situation facing the youth is the result of a contracted economy, then ideas to expand the economy such as the 24-hour economy; government support for various start-up initiatives; or different workforce development programmes were worth trying,” he stated.
He said if the youth unemployment situation was not enough government intervention through the creation of public structures to support job growth or providing the right incentives to the private sector then ideas such as a) the creation of a youth employment bureau; jobs for you program; an SME bank; or a Tax Amnesty programme, were worth trying.
“There is never a shortage of ideas from candidates running for office to address public problems in Ghana. It is the effective and efficient implementation of them, post elections, through well-designed policies and programmes that continue to be a challenge,” he stated.
“There will be only one winner in December. Let’s hope that winner will find a way to build policy consensus across party lines on how best to address youth unemployment,” he stressed.
