Labour minister Utoni Nujoma said employment creation is a complex project which will require government to identify why it failed in creating employment, despite intentions to do so.
The minister made these comments on Friday during a press briefing to address a high-level mission from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Namibia that is currently in the country.
The ILO delegation was in Namibia to assess the country’s readiness and capacity to participate as a pioneering pathfinder in the United Nations (UN) Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection for Just Transitions. The assessment was conducted from 31 January to 3 February.
“As a possible pathfinder country, Namibia is required to identify its entry points for the global initiative. The ministry has tentatively proposed the following inter-related broad areas: policy coherence and coordination of employment and social protection, as well as employment creation. I note this is a complex project which will require us to identify why we have not created employment, despite good intentions to do so, and what are the programmes that will be undertaken to create significant employment; social protection and equality,” said Nujoma.
He added these areas may be reviewed and refined through further consultation and will be supported by an agreed upon financing strategy.
It is no secret that Namibia is faced with staggeringly high youth unemployment despite it having one of the youngest populations in Africa. It is estimated Namibia’s youth unemployment is already over 50%.
The 2018 National Labour Force Survey results point to an increased need to address youth unemployment, which is estimated to have increased from 43% in 2016 to 46% by 2018. The most recent figures from the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) indicate that the country’s overall unemployment rate dropped slightly from 34% in 2016 to 33.4% in 2018.
The UN’s Global Accelerator was launched by its secretary general, António Guterres, in 2021 with the aim of creating 400 million decent jobs in the green, digital and care economies as well as the extension of social protection to an additional four billion people.
Furthermore, minister Nujoma noted the Global Accelerator initiative is a bold post-Covid strategic transformational agenda to accelerate the realisation of national goals to create jobs and strengthen overall social protection.
It, UN programme, addresses problems that impede the realisation of job creation, such as structural unemployment, weak coordination of employment across sectors, inadequate policy coherence, absence of a financing strategy, working in silos, institutional and capacity constraints, inequality and informality.
At the same event, representing the ILO’s head of mission, Shahrashoub Razavi, acknowledged that Namibia already has policies in place to try curb the high unemployment rate.
“We checked, and Namibian policies are well planned and there are also those in the pipeline. We will assist with resource mobilisation to help alleviate and accelerate policies already in the pipeline,” she said.