Report urges support for entrepreneurship and skill formation in Africa.
The Citizen Newspaper (Tanzania)
Victor Karega
Published: December 6, 2008
The World Bank has urged African countries to design a new approach to overcome growing unemployment among the continent's youth.
The call is contained in the bank's African Development Indicators (ADI) report for 2008/09 released worldwide yesterday.
The ADI report, with the theme "Youth and Employment in Africa; Potential, Problems and Promise" urges that African countries extend job and education alternatives in the rural areas to help the youths take off in life.
The continent also needs to encourage and support entrepreneurship, improve access and quality of skills formation and address rising demographic pressures, it reads in part.
Job creation pressures in Africa will continue as the continent's population keeps growing. it said, noting that youths account for 18 per cent of the world's population today.
"Youths number 1.2 billion in absolute terms but of these, 87 per cent live in developing countries," it elaborated.
Shanta Devarajan, the bank's economic counsellor for the Africa region, said one way of solving youth unemployment in Africa is to make sure that life in rural areas is improved to stem rural urban migration.
http://thecitizen.co.tz/newe.php?id=9160
