Govts urged to invest in the youth
Baboki Kayawe | Tuesday September 29, 2015 11:13
Zimbabwe’s former Minister of Industry and International Trade, Nkosana Moyo, who is also an economist raised caution at the annual University of Botswana Foundation Dinner Dance in Gaborone held on Friday.
Officiating at the 15th fundraiser, whose proceeds have to this date financed over 200 graduate studies, Moyo said 60% of Africans are below the age of 35, 50% of which are illiterate, and another 25% of those youth are educated but unemployable.
The Mandela Institute for Development Studies founder added that the two groups are becoming such a big number that if the continent is not careful, a tsunami is waiting to happen.
“They are going to destroy what is there because what is there does not serve their interest.
Not only does it not serve their interest, at the moment there is no sign to give them any hope that there are prospects for them to join the system, therefore just as history tells us, in that situation logically what they will do is destroy the system,” he remarked.
“Investing in the future and development ought to talk to young people, it is about young people,” Moyo said.
He further said every single revolution that has ever taken place anywhere in the world has been born from exclusion.
Moyo cautioned that when a system excludes a group that is large enough, that group begins to perceive that system as never going to give them a chance to belong to the system and they feel uninvested in the sustenance of that system, hence they turn their energies to destroying that system.
He encouraged Botswana, currently with a messy situation of skills mismatch and jobs without people, to develop skills that have utility in the economy as opposed to skills that are unusable to the economy, to curb having educated but unemployable youth.
He added that to avoid this, government ought to create more skilled people (in relevant areas that is), to protect both people’s interest and the system.
Collaborative efforts in areas of networking and market creation would greatly see African countries emerge from their sub-optimal performance in the economic front. Therefore, when dealing with the youth as investment into the future, the continent must groom individuals who are African over and above being a citizen of the globe; leaders who are comfortable about each other across the continent who also know it enough to confront challenges as well as to create a much bigger market.
Likewise, Moyo advised that being the majority population, the youth have all it takes to reinvent the Africa and leadership they want through the ballot.
He said despite the advantage presented by numbers, young people continue to elect the wrong people into political office. “The numbers allow you to create the Africa of the future that you want,” he said.
Meanwhile, the foundation, which builds partnerships with alumni, the general public and the private sector to grow the endowment fund, has awarded graduate scholarships amounting to over P3.5m.