Investment, new policies needed to create jobs

Namibia has to gear its economic and education policies towards equipping its youth for the job market - as well as attract investment - if it wants its unemployment rate of about 20 percent to drop, an economist has told IRIN.

The Namibian newspaper on Tuesday quoted Higher Education Minister Nahas Angula as saying that more than 20,000 Namibian school-leavers were jobless. The report said the minister, speaking at the launch of the Commonwealth Diploma in Youth Development Work (CYP), said there were more than 400,000 children in the education system. About 15,000 of these children were in secondary level institutions, he said.

Namibia has a population of 1.7 million.

"There are, however, more than 20,000 youth who are out of school and jobless. Many others find employment in the public and private sectors, as well as in the informal sectors," Angula was quoted as saying. He added that students' varying needs could only be met through planning, programme development and effective implementation. The course is to be offered by at least two tertiary institutions.

However, Professor Mohamed El-Toukhy, head of the department of economics at the University of Namibia, told IRIN on Wednesday that "the education system must be market-related".

"For example in most African countries, as in Namibia, you need technicians, engineers etc, but this is very expensive education to provide. Yet when you look at the market you find there is a large supply of little-needed qualifications. There are many people, for example, with public administration diplomas and degrees," he said.

El-Toukhy said international donors needed to take note of developing countries' needs and tailor their assistance appropriately. For example, he said, funding initiatives which would make young Namibians employable would lead to more development and job creation than international aid directed towards human rights or gender issues.

"The government is trying, but resources are a constraint and to create qualified people in the fields of engineering, science and technology needs a lot of resources," he noted.

However, he added: "I would say that one of the things you need to change is the culture and the mentality of the young people - to create entrepreneurial skills so that instead of relying on government they can rely on themselves. To this end the University of Namibia is in the process of launching a graduate business school.

Christiaan Keulder, director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, told IRIN the challenge was "more an economic one". While Namibia had only one university and few institutions of higher learning, he said, the question was whether the economy "can absorb some of these newly qualified youngsters". Some solutions, he said, could be found in the service sector, which had great growth potential.