He addressed the unemployment issue amongst the youth says: “The fact that millions of young people are not in employment, education or training is the greatest challenge facing our country today.”
As the country is currently rebuilding after the global pandemic the president says they will remain focused on far-fetching economic reforms and creating conditions for the expansion of business. And he also announced the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention, which is a comprehensive response to the youth unemployment challenge. He says they’ve launched the Presidential Employment Stimulus, which supports public and social employment, and which has created close on 880,000 job opportunities since it was established.
Here are some of the government’s interventions and plans to assist the youth:
- Intensifying their investment drive and removing the red tape that holds back business growth and greater employment creation.
- Harnessing the capacity of the state to respond to the immediate needs of young people.
- A flagship initiative of the employment stimulus is the school assistants programme, which has placed 287,000 young people in schools across the country.
- Launched through the employment stimulus is the Social Employment Fund. It has begun to recruit 50,000 participants in community safety, food and nutrition, digital inclusion, and sports, arts and recreation.
- Launched a new dashboard for the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention on the State of the Nation website. Members of the public are now able to track detailed progress with implementation and receive up-to-date information about the intervention.
- Links young people to opportunities for earning, learning and support, has now signed up over 2.9 million users through their National Pathway Management.
- The Department of Trade, Industry, and Competition, is establishing a fund that will support an enabling ecosystem for young people to engage in forms of enterprise and self-employment.
There are more other initiative mentioned by the president that forms part of the bigger plan to combat the rate of unemployment in the country. There will be more cash injection to youth initiative that will assist up-skill the youth.
“In the past financial year, 7,500 young people have received financial enterprise support and over 30,000 young people have received other enterprise support from the National Youth Development Agency and the Department of Small Business Development.”
