Our young people share…

The unemployment issue has become like a song in Uganda. We’ve heard many people share statistics, personal struggles of being unemployed, possible solutions, and how the problem has been misdiagnosed. Re!gnite Africa, through it’s annual #youthvoicesUg campaign, shares below some of it’s young people’s perspectives on the issue – particularly solutions.

Ms. Labak Janet believes the whole syllabus needs a complete overhaul ( full blog here):

In order to deal with this issue, I propose a serious revision and if possible, an overhaul of the current education syllabi, right from kindergarten to the highest institution of learning. The new education syllabi should have consideration for individual abilities, gifts and talents. Albert Einstein is credited for the saying, “Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”                                         I

I also propose an involvement of the young people in the restructuring of the syllabus. Who better to know what works best for them, than the major stakeholders?  The kind of teachers that train our young people, should also be reviewed. It is very important that these teachers are truly passionate about their job. Anyone that has a passion for what they do, usually goes the extra mile. Teachers with a passion for their job will therefore ensure that they do all they can, to see their students become not only excellent students, but also excellent individuals.       It is also vital, for students to be made to understand why they are in school. If someone does not really understand their reason for doing something, it is very likely for them to lack motivation and a sense of direction.

Hanning proposes many ideas, including this:

“In reviewing the
national curriculum of education, we need to include education focused on entrepreneurial
skills, financial literacy, savings, and the thrifty use or utilization of the limited available
resources.” Read more from his blog here

In his blog, Dominic says;

“The government should come up with programs targeting youths both fresh graduates and those who are about to graduate. These programs should be designed to offer effective mentorship to the youth on how to best develop their skills and how best they can signal these skills to the employers”

And Enock wraps up the conversation by by calling for systemic solutions to the challenges the country faces. These include creating favorable policies for social enterprises and innovation to prosper. He argues that;

“The bottom-line is that we need to restructure the old colonial system. Thirty years back we needed it to fill gaps in administration and sectors left by our departing colonizers. We now need a more robust system that fosters innovation and enterprise; the only challenge is to specify the right sectors and training needed. Like Gerald Meier says, it’s a “Jigsaw puzzle the only problem being that the old puzzle has to been torn down and the new puzzle has not been constructed”