Youth employment programme for Zambia

Abstract

There are at present some 409,000 unemployed youths in the Zambian economy. In the Last five years, youth unemployment has been increasing by an average of approximately 50,000 per annum. The prognosis for the future is that this rate of increase will worsen in the short to medium-term unless deliberate measures are embarked upon immediately to preempt any further deterioration. The high rates of youth unemployment are a result of the poor performance of the economy over the years, which has severely depressed the labour demand in all the sectors; to a lesser extent, job/skill mismatches caused by an education system that is by and large unresponsive to the needs of the employment market; deficient public policy which have failed to stimulate the labour demand and employment growth in the sectors with the greatest potentials for employment creation; and institutional weaknesses which have led to an overall inability to effectively manage youth unemployment.