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Wanted: jobs for Africa’s youth - Business Friendly
In the short term, countries need to do away with policies that hinder investment, notes the World Bank in its report Doing Business in 2006: Creating Jobs. African countries impose the most stringent regulations on entrepreneurs, the Bank reports.

Wanted: jobs for Africa’s youth - Policy Reforms
“For successful poverty reduction, African countries have to be in the driver’s seat,” says World Bank Africa Region Vice-President Gobind Nankani. “Africans know best where the shoe pinches. They should craft their own poverty-reduction strategies based on national realities.”

Wanted: jobs for Africa’s youth - Public Works

In many countries, immediate, short-term solutions are needed to quickly ease the burden of unemployment. Public works programmes are a popular option. South Africa, which commits more than $800 mn to public works, has one of the best programmes on the continent, reports the ILO. In terms of technical design standards and the quality of completed physical infrastructure, the country’s public works programme “was regarded as surpassing anything that the ILO members of an evaluation team had encountered in more than 30 developing countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific,” notes the ILO.

Wanted: jobs for Africa’s youth - Entrepreneurship
Another focus of action has been on spreading entrepreneurship skills beyond the schools. A number of countries have introduced entrepreneurship training programmes, including Gambia, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. Policymakers believe that the promotion of small-business enterprises and the informal sector offer quick solutions to joblessness.

Wanted: jobs for Africa’s youth - Education and training

“It is clear that to rise out of poverty, the people of our continent need jobs and education,” says ECA Executive Secretary Janneh. “Not just any job, but one that provides a decent wage and employment conditions.” According to the Addis Ababa-based ECA, it is crucial for countries to expand training, lifelong learning, education and other means of improving skills, with a particular focus on young people.

Wanted: jobs for Africa’s youth - Diversification

The Youth Employment Network, an alliance of countries initiated by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in collaboration with the heads of the ILO and World Bank, recommends that governments diversify their economies and promote sectors that use a lot of workers. Many African economies still rely on the production of one or two primary commodities. They could diversify into processing these commodities or producing light manufactures, as Mauritius has successfully done.

Wanted: jobs for Africa’s youth - ‘Bad policy’
Since the mid-1990s, economic performance has improved significantly in many African countries, with average annual growth in gross domestic product (GDP) rising steadily from less than 3 per cent in 1998 to 5 per cent in 2005. In theory, according to many economists, this should have led to higher employment.

Wanted: jobs for Africa’s youth - Broadening consultation
At the PRSP review in Cairo, Tanzania’s anti-poverty programme was commended for containing some measurable goals, specific targets and time periods by which job plans would be carried out.

Wanted: jobs for Africa’s youth - Job Plans

However, most countries have not yet incorporated job creation plans into their national development frameworks. The national strategies include anti-poverty programmes, commonly based on Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). These are documents developed with assistance from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to set national priorities, direct spending of debt-relief funds and coordinate donor programmes.


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