Training Africa's Youth to Drive Growth

 

Africa is at a crossroads on the subject of unemployment which the World Bank estimates to be somewhere between 30-50%.  A change is largely required from the no-jobs and no-skills status quo that plagues young people.  Rather than government action, it is our view that the decisions private sector leaders make will be more important in determining whether the youth bulge in Africa will become a demographic dividend or a timebomb.  

 

There is a reason in this volte-face.

 

First, our education system hardly produces the quality of technical or academic graduates that employers seek to create local solutions to local problems. The typical tertiary graduate today is altogether unready for the world of work.  Yet, with degrees in hand, tertiary graduates of every colour demand jobs, and to deal with the social implications of youth unemployment and protect their jobs, African politicians increasingly respond with State-led mass employment programmes that do not develop their skills and competencies. 

 

Governments rather, should aid the transition to a sustainable solution based on clear strategic incentives and political agenda bi-focused on the growth of productivity, innovation and scale; and on the expansion of employment opportunities in order to unleash economic prosperity.  Government support should target organisations of all types and sizes across the economy if they commit to recruit and train the youth to address socioeconomic opportunities and make them competitive in the rapidly changing global economy.

 

Second, Africa is dependent on imported solutions that drive unemployment.  Businesses must pivot from seeing training young people as a cost to viewing people development programmes that emphasise mentoring, training, and metric-based continuous learning as a means to unlock untapped economic opportunities. 

 

The reality is that building local capacity enables local enterprises and the youth that work in and own them to develop unique skills and capabilities that create competitive advantage and buy the future that our society needs to thrive.  Unless Africa innovates, its youth will be cut out of technology developments, cut out of manufacturing, cut out of finance and cut out of markets – except as consumers and exporters of capital. 

 

The future will be very different from today, and businesses supported by governments must apply a quadrangle of principles to underpin the youth-driven transition to sustainable prosperity.

 

First, businesses need to think differently about influencing what and how we teach our children and students in order to align them with the future we want to create.  Then the new training paradigm can address how to sustain the engagement, motivation, performance of the next generation of employees and leaders in all segments of society and sectors of the economy. 

 

Second, governments and businesses must collaborate to get young people into applied learning outside schools, using training apprenticeships, attachments, mentoring programmes and self-development that will derive value for businesses even as they prepare the next generation of skilled labour in addition to their schooling as early as possible. 

 

Third, this future is only possible when the private sector and government agree a common mentoring system to keep track of mentees once they enter the structured development process.  The aim of each mentoring firm or entrepreneur would be to help young people to become better problem-solvers and innovators in whatever field they choose to work in.

 

Lastly, businesses must help mentees to track and improve their progress and employability with transparent tools for measuring how well they are doing on understanding their industry, their job, their customers and the evolution of all three.  The idea is not to train them only for today but to empower them to be a transformational force.

 

Far from a cycle of charity, it is important for companies to recognise that their role in the future will not be as takers of high calibre people without investing directly in developing the quality of the human resources.  On a positive note, these investments will tap skills, ideas and creativity that will feed their own innovation pipelines and leadership pool.  Governments also, must accept and articulate honestly that creating employment is not their forte.  Their support should aim at expanding the tax base in the medium to long term as more businesses thrive and hire more well-paid youth in stable, high-quality employment.

 

A role reversal is what the next 30 years will require and all stakeholders must eagerly embrace it.