Free Access | 2024-04-12

Skilling Uganda’s youth for the fourth industrial revolution

Authors/Editors: Regean Mugume

Abstract:

The Global South is home to 90% of young people worldwide, and by 2030 young people will make up almost half of Africa’s population (El Habti, 2022; GCA, 2021). This youth bulge is an opportunity for Global South countries to take advantage of a larger pool of potential workers to foster economic development. However, limited access to quality education, skills training, and economic opportunities limit the ability of Global South countries to harness this youth bulge (UNDESA, 2015; Gage, 2018). In fact, over 70 million youth globally are unemployed, with young people in the Global South twice as likely to be unemployed or underemployed as compared to the Global North (D’Allant, 2014). As shown in Figure 1, in 2021 youth unemployment stood at 10% in North America and Europe, while it reached 27% in the Middle East and North Africa, and 24% in South Asia. Youth unemployment for West and Central Africa in 2021 was relatively low at around 14%, but this low figure is mainly because 85% of youth in the region work in the informal sector. Thus they are outside the scope of unemployment figures (International Labour Organization [ILO], 2020; Guven & Karlen, 2020; Coulibaly, 2018). This includes those youth working in agriculture which employs almost half of Sub-Saharan Africa’s labour force (Cieslik et al., 2022; Chen & Carré, 2020).