STAR-Ghana and GhanaThink Foundation are holding series of nationwide discussion on youth unemployment in Ghana.
The first edition was held in Accra at Impact Hub, Osu. Similar events have also been held in the Volta, Upper East and Upper West regions.
[contextly_sidebar id=”obbaOVRFT5guZSiOX5CxjGhtQzDHHPeY”]Director of GhanaThink Foundation, Ato Ulzen-Appiah told Citi News at the Accra edition that “job camp is a free networking forum. It is a discussion forum with a lot of networking. We are focusing on jobs and employment. The background for this discussion is research done on jobs in Ghana. We are looking at the percentage of the population that is working, inactive, looking for employment or not.”
Although Ghana has a young population, very few are economically empowered in Ghana.
Currently, a higher number of the country’s population are unemployed while the few who are employed receive meagre wages.
According to the Ghana Statistical Service’s report for 2014, among people working, 47% in a 15–24 age-group, 39% in a 25–34 age-group, and 30% in a 35–65 age-group are not satisfied with their works and would wish to switch jobs.
Ato Ulzen-Appiah said participants in the forum were brainstorming to find a solution to the worrying unemployment trend.
“We are also looking at the quality of training programs. There are some training programs some run by the government others done by the private sector that helps train the youth for job creation. These are part of the reason why we are having this discussion especially to have a more youthful perspective on the job discussions in Ghana because a lot of the time youth people are not able to engage in policy direction.
“A lot of the times we complain about how academia is not connected to the private sector. So if we can have them in a room and they can talk about how they work together already and how they are solving the problems we complain about, that will really help. What we hope to do in the future is to use some of these conversations as research moving forward for those who drive policy work with and even for the private sector to work with,” he added.
The Communications and Learning Manager for STAR-Ghana, Mabel Viviey intimated that the outcomes of the discussions are expected to help address youth employment at the national level.
She said there must be decisive government action to address growing unemployment.
“We hope to have a national convening around the issues so we can bring all the recommendations we are getting from the various regions together, bring in key stakeholders involved in employment so that together we see how we can find solutions to addressing the problems.
One of the questions that informed our decision to hold these camps is whether government response to youth unemployment is as a result of demand for accountability from the youth or something else. And so, the more we demand, the more we expect results.
We are sampling the concerns of the youth and channelling them to the powers that be. Our call for the youth in Ghana to take advantage of the opportunities available though they are inadequate,” she said.
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By: Caleb Kudah/citinewsroom.com/Ghana
