Every
day people especially youth in East Africa are fighting for employment, and no
one agreed that people can live without having a job somewhere in the origin
country or elsewhere, and most of them are thinking to be employed in the
biggest company or in the Government, but they failed to reach their goals
In
this feature, I would like to go though in brain storming about employment and
its contribution to African economics, I would like to help my reader to find
new way of fighting against poverty by self employment lather than depending on
to be employed
Before;
let us explain about employment, people especially youth can think what is
employment; Employment
is an agreement between an employer and an employee that the
employee will provide certain services on the job, and in the employer's
designated workplace, to facilitate
the accomplishment of the employer organization’s goals and mission, in return
for compensation. The agreement
can be verbal, implied, or an official
This definition show that if you don’t
work for somebody you’re not employed, this is very bad perception for those
who have vision to change their livelihood, we should think on our self
employment as the way to meet economic development
Employment
is not economics but it can help people to have good life, either employment is
one of the ways to reach economics either in family, country as well as worldwide
level
If
that is so; let us see the definition of terms economics, there are many definitions
of economics but all depends on who are finding the definition and for what
purpose; for this feature I can define that;-
Economics is the study of the
production and consumption of goods and the transfer of wealth to produce and
obtain those goods. Economics explains how people interact within markets to
get what they want or accomplish certain goals. Since economics is a driving
force of human interaction, studying it often reveals why people and
governments behave in particular ways.
There are two main types of
economics: Macroeconomics and microeconomics. Microeconomics focus on the actions
of individuals and industries, it is a dynamics between buyers and sellers,
borrower and lenders. Macroeconomics on the other hand takes a much broader
view by analyzing the economic and activity of an entire country or the
international market place
The National Youth Development Policy in
Tanzania defines a youth as ‘a boy or girl who is in transition from childhood
to adulthood’. The policy adopts the definition of youth as declared by the
United Nations, which defines a youth as a person aged between 15 to 24 years.
The analysis of youth employment is based on this age group.
The survey results showed the magnitude of
the youth unemployment. The number of employed youths according to the Tanzania
definition is 4,166,620 while the unemployed youths are 823,909 that is 16.5
percent of the total of the employed and unemployed youths. This rate is
drawing attention to the government of Tanzania, East Africa Countries and
other economic stakeholders hence the need for the survey.
The standard definition shows that the
number of employed youths in 2000/01 is 4,544,176 while the Tanzania definition
shows youth employment as 4,166,620 persons. Applying the Tanzania definition,
there is a drop of employment of 377,556 youths, which is 8.3 percent. Thus the
Tanzania definition shows unemployment has gone up. The standard definition
shows the number of unemployed youths is 446,352 while the Tanzania definition
shows the number of unemployed youths as 823,909, a rise in unemployment of up
to 377,557 youths which is about 85 percent.
The Tanzania definition has been introduced
in order to create a base for future comparisons because the trend in future
will put more emphasis on the Tanzania definition. However, in this survey in
order to understand the trend and position of youth employment a comparative
analysis is made between the 1990/91 and the 2000/01 based on the standard
definition.
According to the 2000/01 survey, 4,544,176
youths aged between 15 – 24 years were employed and these constitute 73.7
percent of the entire youth population. The unemployed youths are 446,352,
which is 7.2 percent. The inactive youth population is 19.1 percent.
The employed young females were 2,315,070,
that is about 51 percent of the total employed youths. Employed male youths
were about 49 percent of the employed youths. The number of unemployed youths
is 446,352 of which 56.5 percent are female youths. The inactive youth population is 1,175,513 of
which 50.7 percent are male youths.
The total employed population in Tanzania
according to the standard definition is 16,914,804. The employed youths of the
ages between 15 – 24 years constitutes 24.6 percent of the entire employed
population from 5 years to 70 years and above.
The total employment in Tanzania in the
1990/91 was 10,424,418. Youth employment was 2, 906,788 persons that is about
27.9 percent of the entire employed population. In the 1990/91 Labor Force
Survey youths unemployment was 154,432 persons that was 33 percent of the
entire unemployed population. In the year 2000/01 the total unemployed youths
were 446,352 which were about 44 percent of the entire population. Thus during
the ten year period (1990/91 – 2000/01) youth unemployment has increased by 11
percent.
Youth unemployment is due to a number of
factors, which include lack of skills and training, lack of credit facilities,
problems of transition.
These problems affect youths, particularly
those aged between 15 – 19 years who have just completed primary education.
Even in the rural areas which offer unique opportunities because youths learn
different occupations from child hood, employment is limited during the off
farming season because there are no enough off farm activities to occupy the
youths.
In 1990/91, the number of not economically
active youths was 1,098,481 that were 25.5 percent of the entire population,
which was not economically active. In the 2000/01 the inactive youth population
was 1,175,513, which was 14.4 percent of the entire inactive population.
This statistics shows that Tanzania and
east Africa countries still in trouble and we have big gap between employed and
unemployed, and there are many people those who living without producing and
they don’t contribute anything in our economic development and they are burden
to their family.
Fighting against poverty has two ways,
first, the fighters should have knowledge on poverty war, and the education is
only way to him or her to reach the goals or to win the where youth should go
and attend the class where teachers or lecturers will teach the class on what
is poverty, what is development and how people should do to overcome the
problems, here I mean that without education no development, but this will
happen for those who believes in education
Second type of poverty war is having
business capital to run the project planned, some of people are believe that
money is everything in life, yes I can agree with them because now days you
cannot get anything, human need, social need and even heath needs without
having money. So this kind of poverty fighters are depending on money hence
money can serve those who have knowledge on how to use and maintain it for
projects progress and future
Experience shows that many people do say “Life has no
formula” and if someone succeeds, others do say its God’s Blessing, today I
have learned that there is a formula of life.
I and my fellow journalists were talking to Director of
Standard Voice Limited who owns many entrepreneurship companies in Tanzania,
Mr. James Japhet Daud, during my interview to him in Dar es Salaam on fairer
and success of youth in entrepreneur and even in employment, Mr. Daud told me
that, there is a formula of life, no one can succeed the life without having
and using life formula
He told me that the formula of life is E + R = O. Let
me elaborate the abbreviations. E stands for an (EVENT) + R which stand for
(RESPONSE) which is equal to O, an (OUTCOME).
In a simple language
an Event is the ACTION plus RESPONSE; that is the way you respond to the action,
in other word is PERFORMANCE which can be positive or negative depending on how
you treated an event. If the outcome is poor then you have to change your
response, but if you work hard you can receive good profit in a case of
business or good salary if you are an employee.
Mr. Daud elaborated more by giving examples; “For instance
two persons receive 1 million as a salary per month that is an event; but how
are they going to use the money is different. One may spend the money
extravagantly, profligately, wastefully, while the second one may invest in
establishing a barber shop etc. Automatically the outcome can’t be the same! ”
He added that, if someone is thinking about an event, there
is always visualization in the mind which is very important. Someone has to
visualize be it in sound, mind, color etc.
Also there is subconscious mind, which is hidden plus RAS
which is an abbreviation of Reticular Activating System or arrangements,
whereby every human being has got it in mind, but others die without using it;
they die while their minds are still new. That is real the way
you decide to live.
When you go around small and
large town you will meet large number of youth with age between fourteen
and twenty five, those all are living either in one room with no mattress bed
and domestic equipments, they live depending on daily income which they use it
to pay for food and room rent
After facing difficult of life in their
village is when they decided to travel up to the cities to seek any kind of
Job, but most of them are depending on the second way of fighting against
poverty
Capital (Money) is only way they think
they will win and becomes reach then they will go back at their home, but the
result comes that in town life is hard than in their village
Due to facing hard life most of youth
those who fled their village to town, they have been engaged in crime activities due to mob psychology in order to get short cut good life in the
town, and most of those who being in the wrong behavior they have killed and
among of them are sentenced to jail
When we talk about youth I can’t
separate women and men, there are some differences in fighting for life, e.g.
men can try to be engaged in heavy duty like caring baggage at the ferry,, farm
at bus stand and even in the factories, either social experience show that a
male can also happen to be in armed robbery any other crime activities,
But female by human being they have quit
deference to male, some of them in Tanzania once life comes heavy they decide
to be married and those who failed to get husband they fled to town to find
simple job like house keepers and to be the waiters in the hotel, pub, bar, and
even in casinos
In some of his speeches the ex-prime
minister of Tanzania Hon. Edward Lowasa said, “Unemployed youth is another
atomic bomb for Tanzania, east Africa and Africa at large; let us have courage
and heavy decisions on the youth employment”
In Kenya the researched result done by
the organization called The Youth Banner shows that unemployed rate of youth
are about 40 percent, it seems that the employment is challenge for all east
African countries
The research results show that “It is therefore not uncommon to find young
people idling on pavements or sited in groups with nothing to do. Unemployment
has led to the soaring crime rates among youth in the country. Furthermore,
idle youth have been used by unscrupulous politicians from time to time to
cause chaos or to start gangs that terrorize people”
Like
honourable Lowasa the members of Parliament of Tanzania from Monduli
constitution said about unemployed, Professor Inonda Mwanje, from republic of
Kenya commented the same and quoted in
the daily nation newspaper says that
"unemployment among youth is a time bomb that is about to
explode". (Nov. 2009).
When
I traveled around East Africa countries especially Tanzania, Rwanda and
Burundi, I found so many groups of people fighting for daily breads and all of
them are crying that the life is too hard, I went through their feelings and
found that no one has serious strategy to find the solution lather than crying
against government and political party that are in position of ruling their
government
In the Bus stand of Singida, I saw
so many young Tanzanian selling different farm and factory products like soda,
biscuits, water, banana, potatoes, and extra. Most of them are very young under
18 years and they are running across the buses in order to show their business
to Bus passengers as their only dependable customers
John Jingu is young of 16 years old,
he left his Village called Makiungu in Singida District since 2009 before
finishing his primary school studies standard Seven, now he is working as house
keeper and same times he used to sell domestics product of his boss, John is
who wakeup in the early morning and taking boxes of biscuits and tins of palm
oil up to the Bus stand and start running rear of the buses to fetch customers
In his testimonies he is explain
that; he forced to leave his father and mother and his home due to lack of
family basic needs in their house and he decided to fled its home to town to
fight for well being
“I was living in very difficult way,
no enough food, no god garments, and in our school I was one of the pupils who
haven’t event good uniform and exercise book as well as pen, so due to the poor
living I decided to come here in town to search for job and good life
So we observe that poor life in the
family it is forcing child labor in East Africa and destroying human and child
rights, the poorest family sometimes they used their children’s as tools to
fight against poverty
So many children in the village are
now fighting to shift from their home to town where they think that there is a
job, and due to that most of them they stop to continue with their studies
When we found too many group of
pupils and students stopped to continue in school because of economy it means
that the African continental will still in mark time and we will lose a lot in
development change
Children in Misungwi District support
their parents in business in order to earn their daily bread. These businesses
are conducted in special day’s market known as “minada” due to their schedule.
The children do these business so as they can be given the school fees
The businesses have impact to children
school life because when the child engages in business he is in the risk of
quitting school so as to use more time in business than at school.
Women are the most people who engage in
Entrepreneurship, Most women who are entrepreneurs are the one who are
independent and their families depend on them in provision of basic needs like
clothes, shelter and food
Mary Luya of 35 year old, she is the
successful woman in Singida who own the cafeteria and this business gives her
enough money to provide the needs in her family.
As hard working woman and the boss in
the business she took initiative of preparing the food for her customers as
good as possible and she always train other workers in her business to patient
to the customers because customers need care all the time
But when individuals people are fighting
against poverty, we observe that the East African countries has lack of good
policy that have to be used to empower their people to solve the economic
challenges
Any policy should be the bridge to
people to pass on when they are practice their economic activities and
priorities, but if these policy as well as regulatory will not acquire the
human need automatically there is no need to have such system
When African country especially East Africa fighting against
poverty through enhancing youth and women employment our authority should think
how their people are gaining economically through the economic policy that we
have, because without changing the remained policy or if we will still have
people in the power with no commitment to youth and women employment is very
dangerous for development and even African peace.
The International labor organization ILO has created so many
policies on handling the employment crisis in the world but we can see that the
measurement was not taken serious in Africa
The
resolution provides a portfolio of tried and tested measures in five areas:
macro-economic policies, employability, labor market policies, youth
entrepreneurship and rights. It underscores the need for balance, coherence and
complementarily across the policy measures.
Let us think on how we can use economic policies and youth’s
power to build our countries economy in East Africa and Africa at large, let
youth pray their role in making change of true, peace and security development Ends
Writer:
Prosper L. Kwigize
+255
786 200 518, prosperkwigize@gmail.com