Daily Monitor on Wednesday, February 26, carried a story “Uganda needs 1 million jobs for youth -World Bank.” The World Bank report titled “Uganda: Jobs strategy for inclusive growth” had been launched the previous day in Kampala.
The immediate thoughts that come to mind after reading the article was that the population growth was not anticipated and, therefore, not planned for by government. Otherwise why has the alarming unemployment not been dealt with?
According to both the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), Uganda is second in the world in countries with the youngest population.
The recently released World Bank report notes that 700,000 youth aged 18 to 30 and considered to be working age face unemployment. The future looks worse since the figure is set to increase significantly to one million jobless youth in the next 10 years.
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), Uganda’s measured unemployment rate in 2005-6 was 1.9 per cent, increased in 2009-10 to 3.6 per cent, and in 2012 continued growing to 5.1 per cent.
Eight years later, the prospects for Uganda remain bleak and government is silent on how the overwhelming question of youth unemployment will be resolved. It is surprising that government has not proactively or effectively planned for youth employment.
Even more disappointing is that government does not seem to be discussing urgent proposals to arrest the problem. According to the Uganda National Household Survey 2016/17, a significant number of youth, almost 43 per cent, are involved in agriculture, working for their families.
It is highly likely that the type of farming largely undertaken is neither for a paid salary or improvement of household income, nor commercial purposes but purely for subsistence farming for daily food as majority of Ugandans continue to live on the borderline of poverty.
Although President Museveni has on many occasions spoken about assisting farmers transform household income by moving away from subsistence farming to commercial farming, without government investing heavily in the agriculture sector as a way to substantially address the youth unemployment issue, the transition being spoken about has not happened.
In the Budget for Financial Year 2019-20, finally government increased the agriculture budget from Shs900 billion to Shs1.2 trillion. Although the increment was welcomed by many people, it seems to have been ad hoc.
The rational was that if government was serious about investing heavily in agriculture as a way to address youth employment, then a much higher level of financial commitment would have been made.
According to Mr Patrick Ocailap, the Deputy Secretary to the Treasury, the purpose for the Shs300 billion increment was “to cater for the missing ingredients like extension workers and fertilisers that have been directly affected farmer’s productivity.”
However, the reason preventing government from investing adequately in farming, enough to address youth unemployment, could be the fact that Uganda is tired down by overwhelming foreign debt and high interest repayments, so much so that the Budget allocated for interest repayment is an astronomical Shs3 trillion.
As Parliament continues to approve loans undertaken by government almost on a weekly basis, the World Bank report’s recommendations to incentivise commercial agriculture to alleviate the escalating youth unemployment remains pipe dream.
Although demand for food, dairy produce, fresh vegetables and fruits is rising globally, Uganda, once known as the East Africa’s food basket, is completely disadvantaged by debt.
