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Namibia’s youth initiatives and policies found wanting by AU body

November 17, 2021
Namibia’s youth initiatives and policies found wanting by AU body

Namibia’s current economic structure is restrictive and incapable of addressing the growing challenges of youth unemployment in the country, a report by an African Union unit has established.

The African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) Targeted Review Report on Youth Unemployment also found that the country had an uncoordinated policy framework, lacked administrative co-ordination and poor financial consolidation of youth programmes.

“Whereby there is a lack of an appropriate institutional framework to ensure all youth employment initiatives are targeted and time-bound, financed and are properly coordinated, monitored and evaluated in a comprehensive manner. Greater coordinated level of involvement of key economic ministries such as Youth and Sports; Labour; Finance; Trade and Industry and other key national stakeholders, Private Sector, NonGovernmental Organisation (NGO), Civil Society, in the planning and implementation process for job creation interventions is absent,” read part of the report seen by The Brief.

The APRM report said Namibian educational system had a mismatch to labour market demands, with a weak technical and vocational skills development base.

“There is a mismatch between the existing educational, training and development programmes and the requirements of the labour. The provision of skills and vocational training in the informal economy lacks a coordinated and integrated skills development strategy. Technical and Vocational Training (TVET) is undermined and overlooked with the perception that it is for those not academically good enough to guarantee a decent employment on the labour market,” the report said.

Namibia was also found to have an infantile entrepreneurial framework and was failing to implement policies which support local and youth owned companies, when it comes to the provision of goods and services to the government institutions.

“Absence of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms – within the context of national youth employment interventions, there are weaknesses in monitoring and evaluation at all levels. MSME and informal economy policies and strategies - designed to facilitate the transition of enterprises from informality to formality are not accompanied by well-resourced and coherent programme of action, which need to be monitored for progress over time,” the report said.

The country’s agro-based value chains for youth employment and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Sector for Youth Innovation and Employment were found to be weak by the AU body.

“There is no co-ordinated and coherent framework to grow the ICT sector so that it offers substantial transformational possibilities in terms of contributing to economic growth and youth employment creation. Current internship programmes are not only fragmented and not well coordinated,” the report noted.

“Several programmes for the youth that have been put up are not well targeted based on empirical information of youth segmented supported by an information support system or database. And that is where there is a shortcoming with the flow of government information from the national to regional levels and vice versa.”

As part of its recommendations, APRM called for a reviewing the country’s education curriculum for technical and entrepreneurship subjects to be offered throughout the education system, called on government to offer free Technical and Vocational Training (TVET) and for 30 percent of procurement quotas to be reserved for youth MSMEs in government institutions.

Namibia’s overall youth unemployment rate is around 46.1%, according to the 2018 Labour Force Survey.

 Vice President Nangolo Mbumba officially launched the report on Wednesday.

 

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