Seblon Andres
Namibia is one of the countries with a high unemployment rate, especially among young graduates who roam the streets with their diplomas.
The unemployment rate is widely regarded as one of the key labor market indicators and a good measure of job creation and participation in economic activities in the country.
According to the 2018 Namibia Labor Force Survey report, a “lower unemployment rate means an economy with the capacity to absorb available people of working age, while a higher rate means an economy unable to absorb available people of working age.
According to the 2018 Namibia Labor Force Survey, Namibia has one of the highest unemployment rates in Africa and could reach over 50% youth unemployment by the end of 2022.
This means that over half of Namibia’s economically active population is out of work, leading to major social, political and economic crises – as such, high unemployment can have devastating effects on social exclusion , crime, economic well-being, erosion of human capital, death, misery and social instability.
Job creation provides a direct channel to spread the benefits of economic growth widely across the population and evidence from around the world suggests that the more the focus is on employment, the stronger economic growth becomes. effective in the fight against poverty.
The prosperity of a country depends on how many of its people are employed and their productivity, which in turn depends on the skills they have and how effectively they use their skills.
Courses in higher education institutions are overcrowded and the labor market is very limited.
Most students at the University of Namibia, International Management University and other institutions are in teaching or nursing.
More and more teachers and nurses are graduating from these institutions and most of them find themselves unemployed because the job market cannot accommodate all the graduates. It simply means that the more graduates there are, the higher the unemployment rate is likely to be.
The other factor that may contribute to the high unemployment rate in the country is that most academics are just job seekers instead of job creators.
Although the precise path to poverty reduction differs from country to country, most developing countries that have significantly reduced their level of poverty have done so by improving employment opportunities for their people.
The educational system is such that it is based more on theory than on practice. If the government wants to alleviate unemployment among our graduates, it should pay more attention and consider the importance of vocational schools. The reason why African countries are underdeveloped is that they use educational systems that do not meet the needs of their people, a system that was created for them by foreign countries.
Countries like North Korea, China, America, and Russia are ranked with strong economies simply because students do more practice and learn how to manufacture goods and render services at an early stage.
Namibia will never be on par with these countries unless the government changes the education system that meets the current and future needs of the country and invests more in vocational schools.
Unemployment represents a waste of resources, a cost to the economy in terms of lost income, and without employment, most people are excluded from the opportunities created by the economy.
Not only is the country failing to create new jobs, but existing jobs are also being reduced. Unemployment is particularly severe and concentrated among people without formal primary and secondary education.
Many school leavers enter the job market unprepared and with very different expectations from the realities of the job market. Thus, many young women and men experience longer spells of unemployment when looking for their first job.
Unsuccessful attempts to seek work in the formal economy often lead to discouraged young people who end up in the informal sector, where quality, productivity and security are low.
Namibia has a unique opportunity to invest in the Youth Capital with potential for socio-economic benefits. The failure to provide a quality and better education system and to create decent opportunities for a population dominated by young people poses a potential threat to the economic and social stability of the country.
The government should have different policies and strategies to upgrade the education system that meets the needs of the country and a system that can produce graduates who can create jobs rather than graduates who depend on the government for jobs.
There is no doubt that vocational education has great advantages. Graduates from there also have a better standard of living and contribute greatly to socio-economic development by improving the infrastructure of the country and coming up with innovations that can create employment opportunities and reduce the high unemployment rate in the country. .
In conclusion, the government, institutions and graduates should find alternative ways to solve the unemployment crisis among graduates in order to reduce the unemployment rate and avoid an economic crisis in the
country.