We should nurture competitive youth

As I sat to write this, one of the most anticipated fights in boxing history was on everyone’s lips. With everyone chipping in on who between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao would take the day, I silently worried about how much money was to be made by the guys who run sports betting companies that are now more distributed than health centres in this region. However, there are some people who will not have the luxury of thinking about a boxing fight happening miles away from here. These are the thousands of Burundian refugees who have escaped the violence and uncertainty in their country. Their Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has suddenly been restarted to the basic needs of food and security. The protests in Burundi continue to persist claiming some lives and property while generally disrupting life routines. This is one country that does not need to slide back into chaos if it is to keep up with the ambitions of its neighbours in the region particularly the East African Community of which it is a member. I really hope all the issues are sorted out without tearing the country apart. This article is not about boxing or the situation in Burundi but about something I always find myself thinking about a lot lately – youth unemployment. In case you have not noticed, every time a country is seen to be politically fragile there is mention of how so many of its youth are unemployed. We do know that the youth are the majority and that many of them lack skills to perform various jobs effectively or to even create their own opportunities. The education system has not been fast tweaked enough to prepare young people for the prevalent realities of a fast paced world. Many are not risk takers, not critical thinkers and have a disturbing laissez-faire approach to life. On the other hand not many jobs are being created to absorb them in the first place. Most of what is contained in the figures that buttress the Africa is rising mantra is increased consumption, hope hinged on discovered resources and more aid from new sources like China. In many cases what is passed off as growth are the huge figures behind mega infrastructural that tend to ring fence lots of jobs for the donors. It surely becomes worrying when you realise we are riding this deadly combo of growing unemployment and unemployable youths. In this era of globalisation our youth can only be saved if and when they are equipped with skills and a competitive entrepreneurial spirit in whatever they do. We cannot just continue singing to them that they should be job creators while at the same time feeding them the same education that made them unable to create jobs in the first place. Job creators need to be entrepreneurial, risk takers, solution finders and people who can think both inside and outside the box. Last weekend I attended the final of Ms Geek Rwanda, an ICT based girls’ competition, a brain child of a group of successful Rwandan girls/women in the ICT sector. The organisers of the event are therefore not just there to inspire but also mentor and train girls to realise that there is nothing mystic about these things besides focus and hard work. It was not my first time to attend the event and one of the organisers did not need to try hard to convince me to be at this year’s event. What I generally took away from it all is that outside the school programme, it is possible, for a moment, to get young people to conceptualise solutions in an entrepreneurial and practical way. Societies all over the world are transformed by a critical few and so such competitions serve to identify such individuals. For Ms Geek Rwanda, the critical few are originally the patriotic Rwandan girls/women who came up with the idea of the competition and are now nurturing others to be thirsty for perfection. What we need now are other niche areas where our young people can be nurtured to strive for excellence. We need competitions in all other fields of study and at various levels and times. We need to find the best coders, poets, public speakers, athletes, writers, carpenters, or mechanics. Eventually we shall have the skills and competitiveness to ensure that when East Africa needs a railway, we have local engineers supervising locals laying the tracks and employing more of our own people.

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We should nurture competitive youth