Ghana’s population is generally youthful: approximately 57% of Ghanaians are youth under the age of 25. The number of young Ghanaians is expected to double by the year 2030, according to the Ghana Statistical Service.
The need to create employment for our young people is closely linked to national security. There has been a recent rise in cases of armed robbery, cybercrime, assault, murder and many other kinds of deviant behaviour among the youth. It illustrates the truth of the adage “The Devil makes work for idle hands”.
Unemployment can be defined in many different ways but the most common categories are voluntary and involuntary unemployment.
In the field of economics, voluntary unemployment is defined as a situation in which the unemployed person chooses not to accept a job at the going wage rate. On the other hand, involuntary unemployment occurs when a person is willing to work at the prevailing wage yet remains unemployed.
In one case, the worker chooses not to work because his or her reserve wage is higher than the prevailing wage.
Flexible friends
Many young people have great ideas but cannot implement them because there are few or no sources of funding for their ideas. Very high interest rates and high collateral demands from financial institutions have made the acquisition of funds a no-go area for young people and smallholder business owners.
The government has done some work to provide flexible sources for start-up businesses, but its efforts are woefully inadequate to meet the teeming numbers of young people who need such support. It would be more effective if the government made loans easy to acquire for young people under a well-planned youth entrepreneurship scheme in all 16 regions of Ghana.
This would enable young people who already have such talents and business ideas to start up businesses, which in the long run will help create job opportunities. This will make Ghana an attractive investment destination for young people from around the world, especially diasporans who want to start up businesses.
More support mechanisms
Second, the government must provide entrepreneurs with well-structured spaces to run their businesses at a subsidised cost. The high cost of doing business – the burden of corporate taxes and the cost of rent, for instance – has increased over the years and helped ruin young businesses and make most of them not profitable.
This would be a great way to support young businesses, provide lower interest rates and devise trade-friendly policies for entrepreneurs.
Efforts should be made to retain national service personnel from universities after their yearly mandatory service. The government must ensure that a good number of service personnel are retained in the public sector. This will secure employment for our young people, because the government is still the country’s largest employer.
Moreover, the agenda to industrialise Ghana would be given a shot in the arm, because a properly functioning manufacturing sector depends on employing large numbers of people.
Industrial parks and enclaves must be made available in all 16 regions of the country and tax breaks should be given to organisations that employ young people. In cases where companies can make 10% of their yearly new recruitment young people, doing this should entitle them to a generous tax break from the Ghana Revenue Authority. If this is done in a structured way, the incidence of rural-urban migration will abate and shrink to a bare minimum.
More industries should be set up in Ghana which make good use of the labour available locally. They can run 24-hour work schedules, paying the workers based on numbers of hours worked. This will require more hands on board.
Furthermore, running a shift system can be a clever strategy. More government agencies could employ the young people using a shift system. This would allow more people to work a certain number of flexible hours and get paid hourly or weekly. Improving the quality and quantity of employment opportunities links economic growth directly to poverty reduction.
Agriculture
As the population grows there will be more mouths to feed, so the agricultural sector will always be one that has the capacity to employ many young people. The sector employs 65% of Ghana’s rural population, according to research by the Ghana Statistical Service.
However, a great deal of work must be done to make the sector attractive to the youth. The government can curb unemployment by focusing and investing more in agriculture. The support can come to the youth by providing large tracts of land purposely for young farmers and also giving them grants to start up or expand operations.
This would increase production of food crops and create more opportunities for young people who want to venture into farming. It would also provide more material for the agro-processing industry, and increase levels of production and employment. The growth in agriculture will translate into an increase in exports of a greater range of farm produce and processed products.
This will help attract more investors to Ghana and make the economy grow, thereby developing the nation. It will help expand and develop national distribution networks.
There is a need to develop workers’ capacity to understand and promote locally produced goods and services much better. The government should also patronise more locally produced goods and services. It can give out contracts to capable local entrepreneurs to help grow their expertise and create more jobs for young people. This in turn will help build data on Ghana’s employment markets, making the research available accurate, affordable, reliable and useful.
Education
Improvement of our education system is the key to our national development agenda. It will also curb the problem of unemployment.
Boosting vocational and technical education in Ghana is a good way to improve the human capital we need for industrialisation. It would be in order to make technical and vocational education and training (TVET) compulsory in our schools. This would help students learn skills right from school and have an improving impact on many lives.
Teaching more practical, technical and vocational subjects would give the youth skills that make them more employable and which can help them launch their own business. This would help support them in cases where they are unable to find employment in the mainstream.
The government can support TVET by retooling and renovating teaching and learning facilities. Private companies should also be encouraged to take on students during holidays on industrial attachment, to improve their knowledge of those sectors into which they want to venture after their education.
Institutions of learning should encourage regular participation in workshops and seminars by students and should widen provision of entrepreneurship courses, internships, coaching and mentorship to prepare young people to enter the world of work.
Labour policies which reward companies and investors that make it one of the aims to employ more unemployed young people should be given more support by the government.
Social effects of unemployment
Ghanaians, by culture, believe in a social system where each member helps to better the lot of the family as a whole. In situations where an individual is gainfully employed, he or she can be the sole breadwinner for the family and provide care and protection to all its members.
An unemployed person at home becomes a burden on the family because the family sees that person as compounding the hardship out of which the family is trying to elevate itself by educating him or her.
If the breadwinner of the family becomes unemployed, the consequences are far reaching. Some children lose their education; other children are forced into child labour and early childhood marriage. It also creates many deviant youth, since many such children are left on the streets of big towns to fend for themselves, without any proper skills.
Unemployment increases poverty and hardship, strains family relationships, and causes poor mental and physical health. The need to ensure a large majority of our youth are gainfully employed is very important if the family system we have enjoyed over centuries is to be maintained.
Impact on religion
We live in a country where over 90% of the population is religious, making faith an integral part of our lives as a people.
Many churches depend largely on the offerings of their congregation for income to run church operations and support activities of the church in the community where it is located.
COVID-19 made this very clear in many places. Indeed, some churches were on the verge of collapse following the imposition of restrictions on all activities which involved gathering of people.
Unemployed people cannot contribute generously to funding a church’s budget. It would be a good idea that churches venture into establishing farms, hospitals and schools, or create avenues for young people to acquire gainful employment.
Many churches have taken the lead in encouraging some of these initiatives but since the unemployment has increased sharply, churches should take another look at giving back to society and helping as best they can to engage unemployed members of their congregation.
The media
The media are the fifth arm of government and the only group which informs the population about what the government is and does. The media can manipulate, influence, persuade and put pressure on society in both positive and negative ways.
Media are supposed to play an advocacy and education role on rights and responsibilities. The media have the power to engage the powers that be about their vision, or to ask for comprehensive measures to curb the increasing incidence of youth unemployment.
They can also track government interventions in the area of youth employment to ensure the right thing is done and ascertain that the projects are reaching the right people.
The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) has expressed hope that the investment inflows it registered last year will generate roughly 27,110 jobs when the associated projects become fully operational. According to GIPC, 95.46% of the jobs in the new projects will be reserved for Ghanaians; the remaining 4.54% will go to expatriates. The jobs will spring from the 279 projects registered with the centre last year in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic which broke out last year.
The pandemic has exposed the need to expedite the process of moving Ghana to a position beyond aid. That is why the government has developed and is currently implementing the GHC100 billion Ghana CARES/Obaatanpa programme to revitalise and modernise our economy and return it to high and sustained growth for the next three years.
Some of the key projects under Ghana CARES are aiming to:
- Support commercial farming and attract educated youth into the sector.
- Build the country’s light manufacturing.
- Develop Ghana’s housing and construction industry, establishing Ghana as a regional hub.
- Create jobs for young people and expand opportunities for the vulnerable, including people with disabilities.
Policy directives for youth employment
By the government:
- Adequate funding and support for COTVET/TVET
- Support youth entrepreneurship
- Invest more in agriculture
- More investment in career guidance and counselling; work-based learning, coaching and mentoring to equip young people.
- The government can make the most of the impact of such measures by scaling up these priority areas in the youth employment plan and improving outreach to young people.
By the youth:
- Young people need to be more innovative
- Acquire skills which create opportunities for self-employment
- Offer free services, where possible, to support each other to gain knowledge and experience in preparation for permanent work
- Create opportunities in fields which are rapidly evolving as a result of technological innovation (for example, software development)
- Improve on information marketing
In conclusion, the idea of minimising the problem of youth unemployment is a national security challenge and must be given the attention it deserves.
The development of our country hinges on the quality and quantity of our human capital in all sectors of the economy. Patient capital should also be made available for young Ghanaians who want to start up businesses.
Palgrave Boakye-Danquah
Palgrave Boakye-Danquah is the executive director of the Kandifo Institute. Email: palgrave@pbdanquah.com
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