New Year School participants call for concerted efforts to address youth unemployment

The Executive Chairman of Jonah Capital, an investment capital holding company based in South Africa, has stated that youth unemployment is the greatest threat to national security.

Sir Sam Jonah has, therefore, called for concerted national efforts devoid of partisan considerations to address that challenge head-on to ensure sustainable national development.

He said the effort must hinge on public-private partnerships (PPPs).

“The urgency of job creation to meet the needs of the teeming youth who come out of the universities every year is more troubling, especially relating to the country’s demographics which put people below age 35 about 60 per cent,” he said.

 “About a fortnight ago, the sad spectacle of thousands of youth who thronged the El Wak Stadium for interview for a few vacant jobs in the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) loudly captures the crisis of joblessness and calls for urgent attention,” he added.

New Year School

Delivering the keynote address at the opening session of the 69th annual New Year School and Conference organised by the University of Ghana in Accra on Monday, Mr Jonah said job creation initiatives should transcend political ideologies.

The ceremony, which was attended by some members of academia, Parliament, representatives of private sector institutions and a section of society, was on the theme: “Job creation for accelerated national development: The role of the private sector”.

Among dignitaries at the function were the Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia; the Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Alan Kyerematen; the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Mr Ignatius Baffour Awuah, and the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Professor Ebenezer Oduro Owusu. 

Participants in the week-long programme will explore how the public and the private sectors could collaborate to create job opportunities to propel socio-economic development.

Educational system

While lauding efforts made by the government to create jobs through some policy initiatives, Sir Jonah observed that failure to properly implement those programmes would dim the country’s economic potential.

He said the conversion of the country’s polytechnics into technical universities was worrying and cautioned that it was a threat to Ghana’s quest to develop its human resource, with respect to providing people with the appropriate skills to promote the national development agenda.

“Over the last three years, enrolment into Social Science courses at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) has been higher than the combined enrolment of Engineering and Science students.

“Our polytechnics, for some reasons I cannot understand, have been turned into universities and they are now offering Social Science courses. This is worrying, so we must take a look at our educational system and align it with the demands of industry,” he advised.

Enabling environment

Sir Jonah called on the government to create an enabling business environment to boost the confidence of investors, particularly so as current policies would hinge on private sector participation.

He said that called for a stable political economy, transparency in the management of resources by public institutions, effective land administration and micro-economic stability, since those factors influenced investor decision.

For his part, Prof. Oduro Owusu said given the urgent need to tackle the challenge of graduate unemployment head on, it was important for the government and tertiary institutions to rise to the occasion by equipping students with critical thinking skills.

He said the educational system ought to be tailored towards equipping the youth with entrepreneurial skills and innovative business ideas to be self-reliant.

The acting Provost of the College of Education and Dean of the School of Continuing and Distance Education of the University of Ghana, Prof. Michael Ayitey Tagoe, said the theme for the event was apt because for the country to develop, it was important for it to create decent employment for its citizens.

He joined in the call for a national consensus to remove barriers to partnerships between the private and the public sectors as the way forward to create jobs for the teeming unemployed youth.