Youth unemployment will remain a huge challenge in Ghana if various stakeholders do not agree on a single way to address the situation, Labour Analyst, Austine Gammey has said.
Already, the World Bank Group has called for regular interaction among key stakeholders to reduce duplication of policies and also share knowledge.
Data available from the 2015 Labour Force Report by the Ghana Statistical Service indicates that out of 11.9 percent of the country’s population which is unemployed, 12.1 percent are youth.
Disparities were also found in the rural and urban employment rates. For instance, the portion of unemployed youth in urban areas is 13.6 percent higher than the 10.4 percent in rural areas.
Although various governments over the years have implemented different strategies to tackle the phenomenon, the country’s youth unemployment scene remains uncoordinated and fragmented with overlaps in mandates among stakeholder institutions.
The lack of synergies limits the effectiveness, efficiency and overall impact of programming.
In an interview with Citi Business News, Austin Gammey said the solutions to addressing youth unemployment should not be politicized, but should rather be done through agreed stakeholder consultation.
“Stakeholders have been so individualistic about youth unemployment without any coherent arrangement to bring stakeholders’ knowledge together to brainstorm and end up having a consensus of the way forward so that we stop the excessive partisan approach to job creation for the youth”, he stressed.
He added, “No one knows it all we need to come together and have a conversation, brainstorm, and we will have a solution to this problem which can go to 2030 and beyond”.