Editorial
Today, Zambia is dogged with a steep youth unemployment crisis. The recent 2022 census recruitment circus we witnessed in Zambia was just but an eye opener to those who care to discern, on how deep and crashing this problem is.
The fact of the matter is that the Zambian economy today is not creating enough jobs to satisfy the increasing number of youths completing secondary, college and university education. The population is on an aggressive rise for the next two to three generations to come.
Some thought that with a change of government, this problem would be sorted out in the shortest period of time. As a the first year of the new Dawn UPND Government has passed on, its now more clear that the problem of youth unemployment is BIG, is humongous and needs unconventional solutions.
Some youths and to a larger extent, some experienced hands alike thought that this youth unemployment crisis was a creation of of the then PF government, and that a UPND government would sort it out at a breakneck speed. Alas, it’s still very visible even to the most passive of our citizens.
Well, as they say, the jury is still out and too early for us to judge as we still have four more years to see how the new dawn administration will deal with this unemployment crisis which is far much more complex than what entrenched politicians would ever publicly admit.
Actually, had it not been for the high poverty levels and limited opportunities, some of the new appointees in the current government who are honest enough would by now have started resigning on their own after getting to terms with the depth of the problems and their ability to solve the them in the constitutionally mandated five year term of office.
But we should also be honest that genuine attempts have been made to create jobs by the new dawn government. Even as we recognized and commend the current government for employing about 40k education and health workers into the civil service, the state of youth unemployment remains at crisis level.
No wonder our statistic agency stays away from publishing this number in their monthly bulletin headlines despite the statistic being more important to gauge the economic health of our economy at this time of having the majority of our citizens being youths.
That’s why we are seeing more and more well meaning citizens coming to terms with the fact that the economy is simply not creating enough jobs and that this deep problem of unemployment were our young people are resorting to betting as a means to make a living needs unconventional solutions which may not even be attainable in the short to term.
We say this because we now have an estimated 200k (200,000) plus new graduates or job seekers that include school drop outs, secondary schools, trade schools, colleges and universities on a yearly basis joining the hunt for the few available jobs, making the queue longer and longer every three, to six to twelve months.
One tested way to create massive employment opportunities is to industrialize the economy. To industrialize an economy, analysts say Zambia only lacks one major component as the country is already well endowed with huge land mass, expanding population of labour and enterprising citizens. What the country lacks is adequate and excess affordable power or electricity to attract global industrialists capital to set up.
One unconventional solution that has been suggested for Zambia is to set up nuclear power plants and generate massive energy that could be used to attract large scale industrial producers and export of excess power. There is need to critically look at this option that offers to transfer this technology to Zambia through Rasatom or any other well established global player. Considerable progress was made on this bilateral deal but it seems to have been put on ice.
For your own information, the UK is reported to have over over 8 commercial nuclear power plants, France has over 56, US has over 55, Russia has over 35, China has with Ukraine being also a major Nuclear power producer. Suffice to say, most notable industrialized economies including our very own South Africa in Africa has power generated from commercial nuclear power plants.
Zambia has notable reported local Uranium deposits that can be exploited for commercial and energy purposes, a situation that can turn around Zambia’s current power production of over 3,300 MW to some thousands of Giga Watts, a scenario that would be used to attract large scale global manufactures, industries with the excess being offloaded onto the export market.
You may argue that we don’t need nuclear power plants to develop, to industrialize and create mass employment, to solve the huge youth unemployment crisis which is now threatening to make the country’s politics and social life toxic, but a check around the countries that are ahead economically shows a different picture, they actually have commercial nuclear power plants and their total annual power production figures are 100 times more than what Zambia currently produces.
The above is just one of the unconventional ways that have been put out. Dear reader, feel free to contribute by commenting on this article or sending an anonymous email on what other unconventional of extra-ordinary solutions that Zambia should pursue. These business as usual incremental actions have limited impact to radically move the country to the next level.
What is perhaps clear to the initiated is that something extra-ordinary, something unconventional needs to be done by those that hold the collective power of the state, by those that hold sway of the highest office of the land.
Even as time moves on, as greed and familiarity sets in, as the new dawn government presents its second national budget, it will soon dawn even to the most loyal and optimistic nationalists that even the much hyped IMF facility is but just a drop in the ocean of the complex challenges that beseech our beloved country Zambia and its geopolitical position.
The need for extra-ordinary and unconventional solutions is now more urgent than ever before. The levels of youth unemployment is alarming and needs immediate attention. Do we have any policies that have been put out by the HH led government that we should expect will create massive employment opportunities for our youths to close the widening gap?
For anonymous comments and contribution, email: editor@zambianbusinesstimes.com
