Youth Unemployment Gap: Call for a collective response

YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT

I read an interesting analysis in the Daily Monitor of 31/10/2018 by Charles Onyango Obbo from his Oslo escapades with the #PeoplePower platform. Charles demonstrated his grasp of the social and economic pitfalls in Uganda that has made young people unrestful, unemployed and generally distrustful of the current regime.

In that analysis, Charles outlines the failures of universal education system as foundational to youth unemployment today for delivering substandard quality.

Everywhere you go in Uganda, the poor quality of university and college graduates reflects a weak early educational foundation they received. When we evaluate the gaps in universal education, we examine a constellation of factors – from policy, financing, structure, content, the quality of those who manage and deliver it, to the conditions under which the education is delivered. 

Numerous reports indicate that graduates and teachers of UPE and USE hardly have basic literacy skills in language, logic, critical thinking, history and arithmetic. The disparity is glaring between urban and rural settings – the education system, far from its inherent flaws, is not equitable. Thus, the high rates of drop out in rural and among female students.

Even then, the distinction between College and University remains nebulously explained. In Uganda, College path is deemed for failures, yet Colleges provide the necessary hands-on skills needed for entrepreneurship and employment.

Universities may have been traditional spaces for knowledge and ideology production, but the colonial colleges were places for skills acquisition.

Most countries where youth unemployment is kept low have invested in high quality education and early childhood development. These countries adhere to education as a pathway to reproducing high quality labour in all areas of its economy. For instance, in German, there is an emphasis on appetenceship as a form of education. In the United States, and Canada, community colleges provide students with needed skills for employment.

Previous Uganda Census data confirm that over half of Uganda's population comprises youth, under the age of 29; Labour statistics estimates that 86% are unemployed, under-employed and or at the level of getting to employable.

Moreover, of the unemployed youths, those who become unrestful have education but lack skills and competence to work efficiently – even basic skills such as to show up at work daily and on time. For an economy that is strange to meritocracy, well prepared youths tend to be excluded from gainful employment and opportunities.

There is a big incongruency between the National Youth Policy and National Development Agenda since both are politically inclined rather than labour focused. We see money for politicizing these and not for honing youth’s skill or financing transition programs from school-to-workplace through internships, mentorships and other forms of professional socializing essential for entry level employment.

The large pool of unemployed graduates may reveal that the economy is actually shrinking rather than expanding. In 2016, UBOS found that 90% of all Ugandans under the age of 25 had no job; 58% of all Ugandans were unemployed and a whopping 65.2% of women and 47% of men were unemployed. The sanitized UBOS reports in 2018 may present a different case, but here are some of strides that Uganda must pursue urgently to integrate more people in productive work.

     a)   Invest in soft skills and digital jobs as pathways for harnessing youth energy productively. Youths have taken up social innovation using apps and communication through social media to participate in the digital revolution.

     b) Responsible taxation policies to stimulate and encourage innovation.

     c) Apprenticeships and work-based learning programs for youths to socialize early to work place settings. The graduate training program at Uganda Revenue Authority and the Partnership between Ministry of Gender and the UN Volunteers could provide models for policy makers.  Work-based apprenticeships should become the face of universal education.

     d) Young people involvement in research – a tradition of systematic inquiry; and high level of creative writing for publishing.

     e) Create a fluid skills-focused education system where a person can change career at least thrice in a life time as it is in developed countries. Current system is too rigid to allow people change career.  

End.

Torture in Uganda: From Panda Gari to Panda Kamunye

STATE TORTURE

Insecurity in Uganda today brings back frightening memories of our bloody past complete with its “ganda gari” traits. Except that for this one, it is panda Kamunye – matatu used by plain clothed state operators to kidnap victims of its violent arrests.

 We should be frightened that the state operators, rather than criminals are selecting gross violation of human rights, torture and all forms of incivility as a political tool contrary to all international treatise against torture and inhuman treatment that Uganda is signatory.

This torture video clips that confront us every day, such as that of Yusuf Kawoya, arrested of persons for hosting opposition leaders, and many others, only loops us back to the Idi Amin’s days of horror.

Uganda is on its path to a catastrophe because soon this insecurity will engulf the nation as people will start to roll back their cooperation with the state. For now, the population seems frozen in fear of this iron fist totalitarianism. At its climax, people will unfreeze and become insurgent to the state as they did to Amin and dictators elsewhere.

The ripple effect of violent arrest and torture of Hon. Kyagulanyi with 33 others from Arua's by-elections should have restrained this belligerent regime from its extra-judicial domains. The state may have monopoly over violence and coercion, however, there must be sufficient justification for applying that brute force. Mass arrests and torturing supporters of #Peoplepower or murdering those Muslim clerics will not solve Uganda’s woes. The problems we face today – the agitation, violence, criminality, corruption and dereliction of duties by state and non-state actors, have roots in the pervasive economic inequality and entrenchment.  

Recently, I asked a People Power adherent whether she had heard of Panda Gari. She had not. I concluded that she must be one of the “Bazukulus” (grandchildren or the bushwar). I asked if she is familiar now with Panda Kamunye, the Yusuf Kawooya situation, and she frowned. Reality had hit her. There was no need to explain what panda Kamunye was, except the parallel with Amin’s operations.

Hon. Winnie Byanyiima once twitted that Museveni’s regime is a mixed basket of good and bad. The bad are the episodes of those old dark days of violence when human life was easily dispensable, human where mere biological substances, and security was a variation of insecurity.

 The last two years were unique for Museveni in his effort to undo Amin’s days of terror and horror. It has been a near daily experience that Ugandans are violently arrested, harasses, kidnapped and killed in broad daylight. The helplessness on the faces of those who watch these atrocities, or the ones who have to bear the agony of their lost ones are even more horrifying.

Nowadays, people get frozen – powerlessly watching impunity unveil before their eyes. They even leave and return to their homes more disempowered, demoralized and dehumanized. The way people fear to be victims of crime is nearly commensurate with the fear to witness crime. It leads to immense psychological suffering which becomes embedded in transgenerational trauma and mental illness. Fear is disempowering, and to watch a fellow citizen die, humiliated, reduced like an object conjures a profound sense of powerlessness for law abiding citizens.

Interestingly, dictator Museveni normalizes, justifies and encourages such impunity as an act of self-defense.

Ugandans are, by any means, a very resilient people that have encountered many traumatic episodes since independence. However, the abuse of the citizens, and the havoc that the Museveni regime is wrecking on our people, the economy and whatever residual public institutions left, must be halted.  

Uganda is certainly an unsafe destination for tourists, investors, researchers – not even for Ugandans in the diaspora already shortlisted for arrests upon arrival at the airport for demonstrating against savagery of the state.

No one should panda kamunye for holding opposing ideas in Uganda.

End