Dear presidential candidates,
In the polite language of emails and public service announcements, we might begin by hoping the recipient is well. But the Ugandan youth population has no time for such pleasantries. We need to tackle a crisis so pressing that it threatens to swallow our future : the epidemic of youth unemployment.
For generations, our parents gave us one singular piece of advice: go to school.
‘Education is the key to success,’ they promised, citing examples of successful professors, doctors, engineers, and lawyers who had made fortunes by mastering their books. We took that advice. We pursued degrees, diplomas, and certificates, placing the most valuable years of our lives into the academic system.
The tragic reality now is that the key is broken, and the door to success remains locked. According to data from the Mastercard Foundation, only about 12 percent of Ugandan graduates secure formal employment.
This is a devastating statistic. It implies that for 88 percent of people who dedicate themselves to the academic path, that path ends up being useless-and I use that word for lack of a better, more descriptive one. Ask yourselves, as potential leaders of this nation: Is anything with an 88 percent chance of failure a good investment? We have invested our lives, and the returns are misery.
This crisis is a human tragedy with consequences we see daily. Almost half of our young, working-age population is either unemployed or not in education or training. Most of those who go to school do not get employed.
Driven by desperation, some are forced to leave the country for the Middle East, ending up doing things they would never have contemplated doing at home, sometimes even dying in search of a decent shot at life.
The challenge of unemployment is continually misconstrued by those in power. Usually, the conversation quickly defaults to the “lack of skills” among the youth.
However, I am inclined to think the true problem has far more to do with the actual lack of employment avenues than it has to do with any skills gap. Industry, in a healthy economy, dictates the kinds of people it needs to employ, and academia then becomes malleable to that direction. We cannot create skills for industries that simply do not exist or are not growing.
Not to say that academia is performing perfectly, but we must focus our efforts on the cause, not the symptom. The fundamental problem of unemployment remains no jobs, and NOT unoccupied jobs.
Therefore, we ask you, our presidential candidates, that as you campaign and promise us a new dawn, you look beyond the empty rhetoric. Stop giving us textbook answers that only cite capacity building or skilling initiatives. Give us a feasible, actionable, and financed way forward out of this unemployment crisis.
Your race can be won or lost on this issue alone. If you appeal plausibly to the vast pool of unemployed youth, you will be appealing to more than 10 million people-a demographic not only able to vote but also able to swiftly walk to the polling station to tick your name. Address this crisis, and you address the future of the nation.