A total of 7050 men and women Friday graduated from University of Rwanda, with as many as 6,540 of them receiving their first degrees. While a few of these graduates are already working or engaged in profitable undertakings in the business world, the majority of them have no employment and add to the burden of the already unemployed youths. At the graduation ceremony in Huye, officials rightly pointed out the country’s significant gains in the education sector over the last couple of years and reiterated the government’s commitment to ensuring that all Rwandans received quality education – all the way to the tertiary level. Nonetheless, it is one thing to attain an education and another to translate the knowledge and skills acquired into accomplishments in the labour market. Over the years the country has rolled out programmes aimed at empowering particularly the youth so they can be economically active, change their lives for the better, impact their families and subsequently the country’s growth agenda. Indeed different initiatives in such areas as agriculture, manufacturing, environment conservation, agribusiness, trade, and innovation have seen government and its partners pump in billions of Francs, with the youth the primary target. Unfortunately, in most cases the youth hardly take full advantage of these initiatives. It takes innovative minds, open-mindedness and pragmatism to come up with winning proposals. Luckily, there is no shortage of political will to help the Rwandan youth become productive citizens in the world of work, including through such efforts as creation of supportive institutional frameworks, an enabling environment, guarantee funds, among others. What our fresh graduates– and indeed other youths – need is to have full information about these different initiatives and find ways of making the most of them – including joining cooperatives of like-minded peers, putting together winning proposals and being disciplined and accountable during implementation of their projects.
