The ever-growing tension between the youth and government need a proper strategised remedy to avoid reaching the crisis point of social unrest.
To a certain degree, both sides are impatient towards each other when dealing with various ways of tackling socio-economic challenges, which, if not remedied, will transform into a societal catastrophic pandemic in the long run.
With the recent China town chaos in the capital, where many youth took to the street, although one can perceive it as a politically aligned incident in its wider spectrum, it’s an indicative cry of the youth empowerment and sky-rocketing unemployment crisis.
In its line of duty, the state is to ensure youth are drawn closer to information and infrastructural services at their disposal in a much broader spectrum to mitigate the urgent call for transformational youth development agenda.
Namibia Statistics Agency’s Labour Force Survey of 2018 indicates that the unemployment rate stood at 33.4%, with the youth unemployment rate of 46.1%, of which men accounted for 43.7% and females for staggering 48.5%.
According to these figures, it is fair to say that every second young woman was unemployed in 2018 (New Era, 21 June 2022, p9)
The majorities of productive, educated youth are out of economic sectors merely due to a lack of grass root support in the entrepreneurial field from the state.
Unlike many other countries, Namibia is faced with various external factors, such as climate change, which negatively impacts the employment prospect, especially for starters and the youth.
This adds another bargaining burden for the state to start vying and advocating for effective innovative ideas, especially in the primary production sectors of the national economic value.
Such ideas could be deviating from the old norms of giving more training to youth, which is not accompanied by equipment and machineries allocation to the modest comprehensive one of equipping youth with financial start-up, machineries, business land allocation and physical infrastructure, where productive business could be conducted, giving power to the youth in return.
One of the applaudable historic event is that of rural youth empowerment, whereby the Development Bank of Namibia has financed 28 rural youth enterprises to the tune of N$8 million, which, once successfully administered, it would yield a productive result to many homesteads and the Namibian economy at large.
Because of the serious state of unemployment and the lack of job opportunities, the youth have very little hope that they have anything to contribute to the economic development.
I do believe that entrepreneurship education is a key contributor to employment creation, as it creates jobs for the youth when there are a few vacancies.
The pivotal role of technical vocational education and training (TVET) in economic development cannot be overemphasised.
TVET has had a positive effect on economic growth, and it succeeded in reducing poverty, crime and the unemployment rate.
Those who are technically skilled found it easy to be self-employed and be economically productive, thereby increasing the country’s employment rate and promoting economic growth.
Since young people comprise a large and growing proportion of the economically active population, their employment prospect affects the country’s future and its GDP growth.
While that is true, the high rate of unemployment contributes to slow economic growth, dependency on the primary sector and also the mismatch between supply and demand for skills.
To address such skill mismatch, it is equally crucial for education and training sectors to align the skills development initiatives with skills demanded by the economic sector.
For Namibia to make a difference to its economic development of addressing youth unemployment, the country needs to prioritise the TVET sector, and the non-government organisations and private companies must play an important role in this youth development agenda, although the government created the youth ministry.
The recent deep budget cuts may unfortunately be perceived by the youth as a stumbling block for youth emancipation processes.
There is an urgent need for government, NGOs, as well as education and training institutions to come together and re-design instrumental programmes to help young people transition from school into the labour market, paving way for Namibia to be a pathfinder in accelerating global consumer and employment demand.
It is my hope that all efforts, combined with the International Labour Organisation through the review and revision of the national employment policy and its implementation plan will anticipate the country urgent need for youth development goals.