Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften	17. Nr.	August 2008
VS 3.	Africa and Europe: Historical and Cultural Dilemmas and Challenges for Nationhood and Development Dokumentation | Documentation | Documentation

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Pitfalls and Successes towards Creating Self-Employment Opportunities for Youths:
The Story and Experiences in Eastern and Southern Africa, 1960s–2000s

Abel G. Ishumi (University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania)

Email: ishumi@edu.udsm.ac.tz

Abstract

In any nation, the country’s own citizens are its most important human resource and—particularly the nation’s youth—its potential asset, far more important than material facilities such as natural resources and machinery in the land. If all citizens of a country were able to participate effectively in economic and social productive activities, no doubt a difference would soon be noticed and could even quantified in terms of their well-being and of wealth-generation both at a personal and at a general community level. Society and its population would not only have to be expected to demonstrate general cognitive abilities such as basic literacy (reading, writing and numeracy); they would not only have to be expected to solve their own existential problems in their homes and more widely within their communities; but also they would be able to demonstrate certain creative psycho-motive skills that constitute and transform a workplace. If this statement applies to all countries in all economies and all cultures, then an immediate question would be why this has not been the case in societies in Africa (and to some extent in other Third-World countries)? What went wrong with youth? Where was the “false start” in Africa? A set of theoretical and conceptual assumptions will be expounded concerning youth, as a basis for the issues at stake in many societies in Africa.

The paper will trace the problem from the roots within the colonial set-up before the 1960s, which seems to have continued during the early years of political independence. The paper will give investigative research evidence to demonstrate conditions under which youth could be a blessing or a danger in a nation and will seek to emphasise implications for a constructive policy framework that is anticipatory of and conducive to job-creation and self-employment potentialities for elementary children and youth at general school level and those out of a formal school curriculum.

Tanzania will be used to provide a combined research-based-cum-experiential case study of a phenomenon.

 

Introduction

In any nation, the country’s own citizens are its most important human resource—far more important than material facilities such as natural resources and machinery in the land—and the country’s youth are potentially the most reliable potential asset in the country’s development process. If all citizens of a country were able to participate effectively in economic and social production activities, for their own personal self-fulfilment and for the improvement of their community, no doubt a difference would soon be noted and even quantified in terms of the nation’s wealth-creation capacity both at the personal and at the general community level. Society and its population would not only have to be expected to demonstrate general cognitive abilities such as basic literacy (reading, writing and numeracy), but also to demonstrate certain creative psycho-motor powers and skills that constitute and transform a workplace. If this statement is universally true of all countries in all economies and all cultures, then it ought to apply to Tanzania as well.

Past Pitfalls

This paper, on “Pitfalls and Successes towards Creating Self-Employment Opportunities for Youths: The Story and Experiences in Eastern and Southern Africa, 1960s–2000s”, begins by recalling a number of popular misconceptions that dominate popular thinking and belief in society in many developing countries. These misconceptions have tended to influence the mentality of a wide section of the population and, as a result of the seeming truth about them, have influenced national-social policy as well. These popular misconceptions are as stated below:

• That ‘employment’ is something (e.g. a present or gift) that can be given, accorded or handed over from someone [or from an organisation] to someone who doesn’t have it but needs it for survival. Implicit in this assumption is that employment cannot be created or made];
• That “jobs are naturally there, as special positions” so that those who get such jobs must be a lucky, specially distinguished and privileged group;
• That good, respectable and well-paying employment and jobs are obtainable in urban areas, where all or almost all well-to-do persons (presidents and ministers, managers and personnel officers, directors and other categories of employers) reside or live;
• That, therefore, ‘good life’ is to be found and to be lived only in urban settings (cities and towns);
• That getting a job—i.e. getting employed and hence stepping into a good future position—is automatically associated with formal (classroom) learning and passing examinations for an automatic graduation into a [paid]
• That the only kind of job worthy of consideration is ‘paid employment’, where one will expect an automatic salary at the end of the week, fortnight or month, as the case may be.

These are “logically connected” lines of thinking that have for a long time dominated the mentality of the general public, particularly youth, in many African countries from as early as the colonial times and for a long time after political independence in the early 1960s. Instances of this mindset are examined.

Rural-Urban Migration and Youth Problems

A four-year long research study by the author, from 1980 to 1984, yielded a number of observations (Ishumi 1984: 91–97), the most salient being that:

• The old urban-rural divide that began with the emergence of the city had continued and increased over the years, rather than the reverse;
• Youth who left school in the country’s schools perceived opportunities for ‘good life’ as obtainable in town rather than within the rural environment in which they found themselves in the village;
• It was mostly school-leaver youth from lower socio-economic status groups that had suffered the disadvantage of either dropping out of school or leaving primary school with little educational attainment, with little chance of continuing with secondary school and/or with little chance of obtaining gainful occupation at home in the village and that were therefore fleeing from rural village life into urban areas;
• The rate of migration from rural areas (villages) to urban areas (towns and cities) had increased over the two decades from the early 1960s, with youth aged between 10 and 35 years forming the most prominent cohort in the rural-urban migration process. Within this age category those between 16 and 20 years have been the most vulnerable group.
• Considering the low rural parental incomes and the low incomes of the agricultural households, the continuing migration of youths from rural to urban regions has been symptomatic of a massive flight of youth away from “rural poverty” in search for income, wealth and leisure apparently obtainable through paid employment in town.

The research (Ishumi 1984: 60-71) revealed the kind of frustration these young urban migrants faced, in finding no job upon arrival and during a prolonged stay with unfulfilled job aspirations. It also revealed the kinds and levels of urban crime a frustrated, newly urbanised, “de-ruralized, de-villagized” army of youth came to be involved in—such as picking pockets, con artistry and swindling, house breaking and high-jacking, all which have landed them into courts, jails and even trap-killings.

Among recommendations made in this study was an urgent and explicit government intervention, through various policies and approaches aimed at reversing the trend which would at the same time have preventive and curative effects on the emergent phenomenal youth instability — rural-urban migration, rural population denudation, urban vice and crime, intertwined with educational under-achievement and illiteracy. More specifically, the results of his study were used to recommend the following:

• Reversing rural poverty. An immediate arresting of the growing trend of rural poverty that was affecting about 90 percent of the national population through a deliberate government policy of adequate and efficient delivery of agricultural farm inputs; professional advice and extension services to rural farmers and peasants; timely collection of farmers’ market crops, as well as timely and commensurate payment for farmers’ crops. A reversal of the conditions of living, work, production and income earning, away from the setbacks that were being suffered, would hopefully have a retention effect on the urban-migrating youth.
• Reforms in the primary education system. An expanded primary school cycle, from the traditional 7 years (after which children left school still too young to participate in rural production tasks, and often with little practical skills) to an 8- or even 9-year duration was proposed. This, further, could conveniently and sensibly be divided into two parts — a first seven years of basic classroom learning, followed by one or two additional years of learning of practical skills and skill applications to wider life spheres. This was believed to be the real essence of and a base for ‘Education for self-reliance’ as had earlier been advocated by the country’s visionary leader, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere (Nyerere 1967).
• Introducing vocational education and skill training. This referred to the introduction, within the framework of primary education, of a twin vocational education-and-training curriculum that functioned both to sensitise school children to anticipate and learn occupations and trades and, as they were advancing in their primary school years, to train their hands and minds through comprehensive but targeted skills for practical applications beyond their school years. This proposed arrangement was such that, if they proceeded to secondary and higher education, they would find this kind of training supportive to the advanced education they acquired; but for the majority likely not to be selected for higher education levels, this would form a buttress for the occupational and production skills and roles they would assume in society.

These three recommendations rest on the theoretical postulate that youth can be nature’s blessing if and when fully occupied and if and when well-equipped with an exposure to an array of possible anticipatory occupational-vocational choices and roles to which they could direct their minds for targeted skill training in job creation. This would at the same time help to prevent the opposite trend from happening, namely conditions of under-employment and languor, both which turn them into a ‘time-bomb’ bound to explode any time (Ishumi 1984)(1). It is fairly certain that the introduction of multi-pronged vocational training programmes based on a survey and identification of a range of trade-specific and locally relevant occupational skills, e.g. masonry, brick-making, agro-business, etc, would equip youth, both in school and out-of-school, with active skills and potential power not only to create gainful employment for themselves but also to alleviate cyclic bouts of joblessness and poverty.  But beyond this, the series of youth studies and advocacy have emphasized a deliberate public policy that aims at re-orientating the society’s consumption pattern towards promoting local products of youths’ labour and initiatives in gainful wealth creation (Ishumi 1988: 163-174). Generally, society has grown into an unfortunate habit of indiscriminately seeking after and consuming what are characterised as ‘well-finished, imported goods of modern industry’ much to the discouragement of local industry and locally produced goods and services. 

From the beginning of the 1990s, an evaluation of youth vocational training programmes across eastern and southern African countries in the 1990s (Ishumi 1994: 107-127) revealed a number of positive results. Findings in several countries, particularly in Botswana, Kenya and Lesotho were particularly rewarding in terms of national and community initiatives in this area of vocational-cum-technical education for youth. For instance, the Youth Brigades movement in Botswana, which had had an earlier pilot start in 1965, had received additional attention in terms of a greater diversity of vocational skills offered, the 20:80% time proportions for theory vis-à-vis on-the-job-training, as well as and the actual social-economic relevancy of products produced from the vocational training approach. A similar experience was found in Kenya with the village polytechnic centres and in Lesotho, where the Thaba-Khupa Ecumenical Centre, in the Thaba Bosiu province, came to be identified with a national R&D [research-and-development] programme dedicated mostly to training of school-leaver youth.

Subsequent evaluation visits conducted three times in Uganda (September 1996, June 1999 and June 2005), bore testimony of success in no less terms. Uganda had, in fact, had interpreted the research results and translated them into practical action plans and activities. Through political leaders in urban locations, such as Kampala, Masaka and Mutukula, and village community leaders throughout the country, young school leavers and school dropouts were, from 1995 on, mobilised into groups ranging from 15 to 30, subjected to pre-arranged weekend schools and counsel by political leaders, often accompanied by ‘job specialists’, and given a choice of the kind of ‘jobs’ or ‘work’ - in a list of options - they would wish to engage in, ‘creating’ products for sale to outsiders, in terms of either finished products to make or services to render. By 2003, many towns in Uganda, for instance Kampala, Mukono, Masaka, Fort Portal and Busia, had registered a number of ‘youth work groups’ organised around one or the other of the enumerated occupational jobs – brick-making, brick-kilning, carpentry, bicycle-chauffeuring (boda-boda), masonry, commercial vegetable-growing and, lately, export flower-growing (commercial horticulture). Other youth-absorbing self-created jobs include cooperative cafes, hairdressing salons, bicycle-repair bays and farm-crop retailing. From humble beginnings, most youth groups [equivalent of Botswana’s brigades] have grown to become highly motivated and robust occupational groups worthy of capitation loans and credits by public agencies, e.g. government youth development agencies and even banks. Uganda’s youths are now part of a huge capital-formation and community wealth-creating machine that has not only accounted for a proportion of the nation’s gross domestic product [GDP] growth, but has also attracted increased international attention for further support by development agencies, e.g. the Northumberland Scouts of U.K, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the UN Habitat, and the Youth Employment Network. 

At the same time, in Uganda, there has been a growing change of heart, from bias against products of local traditional knowledge to a supportive community embrace of such products – burnt bricks for house-building; the tie-and-dye clothing from youth industry; sofa sets from youth-camp carpentry; etc. which now show great value and fetch higher prices with increasing workmanship. A few of these even compete with some of the supermarket items in town.

With respect to Tanzania, the pattern of responses to the youth-research-based recommendations was at the beginning not clear or consistent. While awareness had clearly been created throughout the 1980s and ’90s by way of public seminars and consultative meetings, there was still a reluctance moving away from or outside the formal residential vocational training centres, earlier set up with external donor assistance – mainly from Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland. Yet, in a national population of 25 million, these were a small drop in an ocean of tens of thousands of primary school leavers unable to proceed to further (secondary) education, not to mention cumulatively greater numbers of anchorless unemployed out-of-school youths. Also, it took researchers and curriculum developers a lot of pain and effort to convince government of the logic and necessity of introducing ‘vocational education’ right at the primary school level before any dedicated vocational technical training at a higher level. Things were left to run on inertia until highly volatile gangs of unemployed youths - both in villages and in town – began to show new and dangerous dimensions of an angry unemployed population ready to strike! Thus, faced with a soaring 35% rate of unemployment, against an almost 60% potentially absorbent and expanding informal sector, renewed thinking about what must be done to mitigate a ‘sleeping volcano about to erupt’ has preoccupied the Tanzanian government and its ruling party in the last three or so years. The ruling party CCM [Chama cha Mapinduzi] has eventually decided to go full-steam ahead to solve the problem. The political battle in the October/November 2005 general election campaign was fought on the platform of, among other key promises, ensuring youth employability and employment: “Tutawawezesha vijana kupata ajira” [meaning “We will ensure employability/deployment of the youth”].

As a first sign of implementation of the pledge, the new President has reshuffled two government ministries concerned with education and youth. He has restructured the former Ministry of Education and Culture into two principal departments: one for general academic education and the other, a new one, for vocational training. He has assigned to each of these wings a dedicated deputy minister. The minister is expected to ensure a proper coordination of the processes represented by the two departments as far as preparation of youth for life is concerned. Also, the former Ministry of Labour, Youth Development and Sports has now been restructured into a Ministry of Labour, Employment and Youth Development, with a Deputy Minister assigned to youth employment/deployment matters. The latter ministry is expected to evolve policies and methods of job-creation in preparation for youth deployment in the informal sector.

The biggest challenge has thus been how to turn the mentality and hands of the youths from a world of fantasy, despair and crime into trained minds and hands for physically creative and economically viable assets for wealth creation in society.

The Relationship between Skill Training, Job Creation and Employability

Indeed, the current positive experiences with youth development activities as well as pedagogical reforms in education and training in Uganda (but also in Botswana and Lesotho) should provide useful insights and lessons to the current government in Tanzania. With a new resolve demonstrated by the leadership, there is a lot to gain from the lessons and experiences in Uganda, where ramifications of the formula are currently demonstrable. The experiences recounted lend credence to a formula that demonstrates the relationship that seems to be drawn between vocational education/technical skill training on the one hand and job creation and employability on the other (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Towards Youth Development and Youth Unemployment Solution: Formula for a Qualitative Relationship between Skill Training, Job Creation and Employability

Perspective

Physical Artefact Production

Practical

Vocational sensitisation

Reflexive

Lasting Employability

Skill Training

=

+

à

Job Creation

+

+

Entrepreneurship

Self-expessive

=

+

Technical training

Service Rendering

Social

Continued Employment

=

Organisational

Employability

Team-playing

Source: Ishumi and Toba (2005: 121–136)

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