Young author offers solutions to unemployment
Nnasaretha Kgamanyane | Friday November 15, 2019 11:01
In an interview with Arts and Culture, the former University of Botswana student who studied Animal Science, said unemployment topic was something that was always lingering in his mind.
He said even though he saw opportunities everywhere and how jobs could be created, there was nothing being done to address unemployment issues despite Africa being rich with so many natural resources. So he ended up writing a book on the subject.
Transilience Production House published the book this year. Refilwe Nong designed its cover. It has nine titles on 124 pages namely The Unemployment Virus, The Starting Point of Unemployment, The Missing Puzzle, What Controls the World is Not Taught in Our Schools, Leadership Without Principles, Strategic Positioning of Countries, Poor Economic Models, Find It and You’ ll Be Free from Unemployment, and What Are Your Solutions to Unemployment.
“This book is all about the solution to unemployment, what causesunemployment and what to do about it. I cannot comprehend why African countries with all natural resources that power the world could be the one with escalating unemployment rates whereas countries with no natural resources have low unemployment rate. Job creation will not be successful without the involvement of the unemployed people. Recently, there was negotiation with workers unions on how to better their situation,” he said.
Gabaisewe explained that the problem could be addressed by changing the country’s current education system. He explained that it had always been said that some of those jobs were lost to machines.
He asked what was it that was done in technology saying ICT was still an option in some schools. He said the curriculum was still focused on training consumers than training experts.
He also pointed out that economic models needed to be changed in order to create jobs.
The young author further stated that what controls the world was not taught in schools. He said money controls the world but financial literacy was not taught in our schools where young people could learn about it.
He said local schools teach little about entrepreneurship. He added that young people should slowly strive to discover their talents and abilities. “We have seen government’s role in trying to make young people ready for jobs. A number of programmes have been introduced such as internship, GVS and Tirelo Sechaba, but studies show that these programmes have seldom matured into permanent jobs.
Are youth happy with these programsme? How is the life of youth who have just been engaged in these programs gaining financial freedom? I wish our government should relook into these questions.”
“Unemployment cannot be solved with temporary solutions. Policy maker should also talk about how they will prevent unemployment.
Unemployed people should be engaged to also come up with solutions, which the government will adopt. As young people age, their roots into poverty deepens. Poverty is not easy to detect when they are still living under parents roofing.
If parents and guardians wake up and decide that their unemployed children should leave their homes, people would see them setting temporary structures because they can even pay rent for proper accommodations.
Young people are depressed even though when you ask them how they are they always say they are fine,” he said.
At the back of the book, he wrote, “for the longest time, Africa has been labeled as a poor continent despite its richness of natural resources and being the home of highly esteemed gemstone.
Some skilled, educated and talented Africans live the rest of their lives either unemployment or working odd jobs for survival. Is the issue here resulting from the strains of the continent or mismanagement of the re-sources?”
This book is a thought provoking exploration of various solutions to African unemployment. The author has shown a lot of talent and understanding of the unemployment issue in Africa. He came up with solutions on how the continent can utilise its natural resources to create employment.
Despite writing the insightful piece, the young author said he does not see himself writing more books.
He however pointed out that he wants to design programs that could provide sustainable job opportunities and business ventures for youth to try and find routes that the governments could adopt.
He added that because some opportunities are now available, writing a book would take long and therefore result in such opportunity fading away.
He pointed out that his book was research based saying that he prefers writing something that can help provide a solution to problems facing the nation.