It was reported last week that two Ugandan ladies died in Abu Dhabi and in India. In the former’s case a real time video of her jumping to her death from the fifth floor of an apartment block did the rounds on social media. In the second case, while it was at first reported as a suicide, on closer scrutiny a more sinister reason was suggested.
Most people would rather work at home than abroad. The comfort of family and familiar environment compensate for higher pay abroad. So often when people go to work abroad its normally because circumstances have forced their hand. War, disaster, economic hardship, political and other persecutions could be the cause.
"Most of the Ugandan youth fleeing abroad do so in search of greener pastures and less for other reasons. They are voting with their feet, this economy is not able to sustain them in the way that they would want....
So we have seen hundreds of youth file out of the country every month to work in the middle east which has taken over from Europe and the US as the preferred destination for our immigrant workers.
So how come we cannot make enough jobs for our youth?
The private sector is the major driver of job creation. Its inability to create jobs means either that there is not enough economy activity to warrant its expansion and therefore greater job creation or they are automating processes therefore needing fewer workers as they expand.
There has been criticism of our economic growth over the last three decades, that while on paper it has been laudable – averaging about six percent a year, it has not come with the commensurate job creation. This is particularly disturbing especially since our population doubles every 25 years and if we think we have problems it can only get worse before it gets better.
Every first Friday of the month, the US’ bureau of labour statistics reports the Non-Farm Payroll (NFP), as the name suggests the number of jobs created outside the agriculture. This is a major indicator of the health of the economy and its future prospects and is awaited with bated breath as it can affect the dollar price or whether the Federal Reserve increases or lowers its interest rate.
It is a recognition that whatever happens in the economy is about people. Numbers are good but they are useless if they do not translate into the improvement of people’s lives.
They say too, that what you focus on expands. BY choosing to focus on job creation as they do, it ensures that the policy makers ensure that any improvements in the macroeconomy are transmitted to the man on the street. You may question the success the US bureaucrats have had on this but at least they try.
In Uganda, like in the US, we have monthly reports on inflation, the state of the economy and every quarter we have other reports on the state of the economy, but we do not have a report dedicated to job creation, even annually. So if we are going to create jobs in this country this would be a good place to start...
We complain about our education system and how it is focused on rote learning and not skill development, but we forget that all job holders today have gone through that same system. While skills development needs more work, my thinking is we go to school to learn how to learn, especially in this age when knowledge becomes obsolete no sooner have you put your text book down.
Skills development is being pushed with the hope that future school goers can make their own jobs, but is possible that one can learn a skill and fail to create a job on a sustainable basis.
A major oversight of many of this skill development programs is that they do not teach accounting or financial literacy, which would help these graduates monetise their skill.
An engineering graduate many years ago – things may have changed, once confessed that he knew everything there was to know about engineering but nothing about how to run an engineering firm. His firm lurched from job to job mainly on the strength of his salary, without that subsidy the clocking would be ticking towards the firm’s doom.
Government can go a step further and integrate financial literacy in the school curriculum as early as in primary school.
"We are poor as a country not because we do not have resources but because we have failed to aggregate our resources, be they land, capital or labour, into meaningful wholes. Hardwiring financial literacy in our children early through a formal process may very well be a game changer...
That being said it maybe in the youth’s best interest to take advantage of the skilling projects being offered in the country before they head for the exit, so that at least when they go abroad they can be more valuable workers. As it is now many of the technical colleges around the country are struggling to enroll students.
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