By Andrew Keili
September 06, 2020, (232News)
“The Times They Are a-Changin’” vibrates with new meaning as far as relates to jobs for young graduates in Sierra Leone. Every time I hear of a University congregation, the first thought that strikes me is the fact that we will have another set of thousands of young people who will join the long queue in the job market. Negative perhaps, but realistic. It has been so for years and it gets worse as time progresses.
Not wanting to dampen the enthusiasm of our new graduates, congratulations are certainly in order for the four thousand or so who trooped to the National Stadium last Saturday. All the years of toil had yielded fruit and they were accorded the recognition due them.
On the job front, available statistics does not seem to be on their side. A recent World Bank report estimates that as many as 11 million young people in Sub-Saharan Africa will be joining the job market every year for the next decade. Too few graduates gain the skills they need to find work. Employers across the region complain of a lack of basic, technical and transferable skills. The issue of employability is certainly a problem. Employability can be defined as the possession of relevant knowledge, skills and other attributes that facilitate the gaining and maintaining of worthwhile employment. It has been estimated that, on average, it takes a university graduate five years to secure a job in Kenya. It is probably worse in Sierra Leone.
A recent British Council sponsored study (Can higher education solve Africa’s job crisis? Understanding graduate employability in Sub-Saharan Africa) which I cited in a similar article on graduates last year states:
“There is widespread concern about the work readiness of graduates. While employers are generally satisfied with the disciplinary knowledge of students, they perceive significant gaps in their IT skills, personal qualities (e.g. reliability) and transferable skills (e.g. team working and problem solving). In many cases, lecturers lack adequate qualifications and preparation themselves, and transmission-based pedagogy and rote learning are commonplace. Universities have also suffered a severe lack of physical resources, including buildings, laboratories and libraries.”
The unemployment rate in Sierra Leone, by whatever standards used for measurement is unacceptably high. Some 80% of the urban and rural labour force may be under-utilised. Whatever the exact figure, graduate and non-graduate unemployment figures are clearly unacceptable.
In Sierra Leone, the private sector does its own share of absorption but this merely scratches the surface. How many Financial and Business services graduates can the Banks or other financial services organisations absorb? How many Engineers can the mining companies or infrastructure projects employ? What happens to the graduates in the Arts, social sciences and peace and conflict studies? The reality is that the civil service is bloated and the capacity of MDAs to absorb graduates is severely limited. The problem is serious, but then our Universities and Colleges continue to churn out these bright hopeful young people in their numbers every year.
His Excellency the President is undoubtedly not oblivious of this situation, hence his clarion call in his speech to this years’ graduants to embrace entrepreneurship. He called for “the training of a new cadre of smart entrepreneurs who will see new opportunities in the diversification of the economy and sub-regional, regional, and international trade pacts”. The President continued in his speech-“So the theme of the 2019 /2020 Congregation, “Education toward Entrepreneurship,” especially resonates with my vision for the future of this country………. I implore university administrators and faculty to develop home-grown entrepreneurship training programmes too that will foster a culture of entrepreneurship among our tertiary institution graduates”.
The President cited many good examples of successful African entrepreneurs as an inspiration to the new graduates. He made mention of new programs like the entrepreneurship programme that will benefit from the NUFFIC Orange Knowledge Grant to the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture. Emeka Okafor, a venture strategist and entrepreneur leader who has for two decades connected innovators with the resources they need to access local, regional and global markets is working as Ecosystems Accelerator Lead working with the DSTI and the Office of the President. The Ecosystems strengthening project is made possible by a grant from UNICEF Innovation Fund in New York. The government has also alluded to the need to fund entrepreneurship programmes for youths in this year’s budget.
Indeed there are a host of local and international initiatives on entrepreneurship. Such initiatives include UNCTAD’s Empretec programme which introduces entrepreneurship to young people and other UN programmes such as the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Know Your Business.
It is good and admirable that the government has latched on to this. But while entrepreneurship is seen as a silver bullet for out-of-work young people, it will not be possible to build a business-orientated workforce without support. There are very few entrepreneurship related courses in our universities and colleges and the few entrepreneurship classes overemphasize concepts, without equipping students with the ‘know how’ to start and run a business. Training programmes need to go beyond business plan preparation and foster linkages to business service providers and networks.
Various organisations dealing with entrepreneurship need to be supported. These include bodies that support entrepreneurs and SMEs-start-up incubators and enterprise accelerators as well as financial institutions, approved research centers- whether independent or attached to universities, whose role is to develop innovative solutions and state bodies working in employment, entrepreneurship, and young people.
The government needs to invest in technological infrastructure to create the foundation for a thriving digital economy and to provide the impetus for the spread of innovation as well as to ensure that young people have access to knowledge and the competencies as well as skills to exploit technology and create commercial products and services.
Access to finance is also a binding constraint for young people that want to start or grow a business. Collateral requirements, high banking fees, inadequate youth-friendly products and lack of financial literacy are key bottlenecks for young people. I am all too familiar with this as I constantly meet young people who are gong-ho about building up their businesses but seem to have no hope in hell for financing. Some have actually taken formal university courses in new innovative fields and others have taken short professional courses in their fields of passion. They draw a blank when you ask them how they will fund their business.
Enhancing Entrepreneurship Education and Skills Development- Support for entrepreneurship courses, programmes and chairs at higher education institutions and universities and investing in innovation through grants, tax breaks and other incentives that encourage public-private partnerships and university-industry collaboration could be adopted by the government.
I am certain the government has given a lot of thought to the issues raised. DSTI’s lead on some of these issues over the past few months provide some hope that we may be on the right track. Entrepreneurship is however sometimes difficult to embrace by us parents who tend to be too traditional. Students voice frustration over the tendency of parents and grandparents to pressure them into traditional career choices. The parents’ thinking is that rather than take the risky entrepreneurial route (particularly the route of social entrepreneurs), children should play it safe by studying hard and finding a good job for a boss. There are a whole host of opportunities in entrepreneurship in fields such as service oriented software applications, integrated waste management services, digital marketing etc.
Not everyone can be an entrepreneur however and there is an obvious need for the government to go to all lengths to encourage the private sector to thrive if jobs are to be created. No country can develop well without a vibrant private sector but the local private sector is fraught with difficulties. Many local service providers are faced with financial and operating capacity issues. To be able to provide jobs the economy needs to improve drastically. We must also make a conscious effort to improve upon the participation of locals in our economy. Some local companies, though competent are hampered by lack of capital to expand and improve on the services they provide. A good friend of mine who owns a business vented out his frustration in a professional forum on this issue thus: “First create the enabling environment. Local businesses are closing; companies are closing laying off people; contractors and consultants are not being paid and so cannot help to train our young engineers; there is no energy to support industrial development. These are some of the problems. When we talk the talk…. we must do the walk to develop our country moving forward”.
The government also needs to introduce a concerted government programme that encompasses the participation and collaboration between various Ministries-Education, Labour and employment and Youth Ministries in particular. Tackling the problem obviously requires them to build a nexus with other Ministries like Trade and Industry (spearheading the local content initiative), employers and universities and colleges. They may want to answer the following questions: Are courses offered relevant for the job market? Do they keep relevant statistics on recent graduate students? Do they have job placement programmes? Do they seek the views of various employers on the relevance of courses and performance of graduates? Do graduates need some sort of postgraduate crash training to prepare them for the job market?
A university degree certificate can open doors, but without a rich learning experience underpinning the degree, it cannot change lives, release potential and transform society. Our new graduates need to be engaged in useful pursuits. They need jobs.
“The Times They Are a-Changin’” should, instead of describing how things have got worse, vibrate with new meaning. We should perhaps not be looking to the past-rather, we should make it an anthem of hope for a future where change is always possible. Entrepreneurship is certainly an idea whose time has come but it needs to be supported.
Ponder my thoughts.
