Opportunities for youth employment are staring at us

One of the densely pop

By Munyonzwe Hamalengwa, Ph.D.

There is no reason for high rates of youth unemployment in Zambia, or anywhere for that matter. Pay attention that I have qualified the subject by stating clearly that I am talking about high rates of youth unemployment, not youth unemployment in general.

Let’s approach this delicate subject indirectly first in order to make the thesis of this article palatable. Every body has heard of the phrase that “beggars cannot be choosers”. We have also heard a variation of this theme in the case of “someone’s garbage could be someone’s gold” ; someone’s terrorist is someone’s freedom fighter; someone’s misfortune constitutes a lawyer’s fortune; a dead body becomes a training doctor’s autopsy and pathology raw material  and on the way to becoming a wealthy practitioner. On and on it goes. It is called the dialectics of life.

I am continuing with my indirect approach to the solution to high rates of youth unemployment. The first time I visited Cuba, my main reason was to find out precisely what it is about this alleged paradise on earth. Did Marx and Engels really conceive of a theoretical or practical system on earth that could solve humankind’s problems? My main investigation was on employment. Employment gives meaning to our lives. Owning a business is employment.

The first thing that struck me on arrival in Cuba was the high levels of employment at the airport. Some employees were  literally just sitting there, occasionally pushing a document here and there. I immediately sensed that that is one of the ways Cuba camouflages its unemployment. I was wrong. There was a method to it. It was highly effective.
Immediately I left the airport, I asked my Cuban tour-guide, “what is the rate of unemployment in Cuba, particularly among the youth?”. He dead panned, “zero rate”. “How can that be?” I asked.

By that time, we were driving through huge plantations of sugar- cane, then mangoes, then oranges and so on. He pointed to these plantations and said, “how can anybody say they are unemployed when there are sugarcanes to be cut throughout the country, there are mangoes to be harvested, oranges to be collected, rice to be planted and all these are continuous all year-round activities”.

I asked whether people don’t refuse to engage in these activities. He again dead panned, “they can’t refuse because then they can’t claim they are unemployed and in fact it is good for them. It is good for the Cuban people and economy”. All these products are distributed to families depending on the size of the family. That was the state of affairs in the early 1990s.

What the Cuban was telling me was that there were opportunities for employment and you can’t choose and say I am unemployed. Of course I am putting this teachable thesis simplistically in order to make a point about solving youth unemployment in Zambia. All this requires governmental planning and deliberation, a lot of coordination, a planned economy with intellectual firepower behind it. It is never like manner from heaven.

Beggars for jobs cannot be choosers. Someone’s garbage can be the unemployed youth’s employment and pathway to happiness and government’s glory to having partially solved the youths’ high rate of unemployment.

What do you see when you travel around in any Zambian city, downtown and in the compounds or shanty towns? Garbage, filthy garbage, hip after hip everywhere you look. Some drainages are covered with dirty water, empty bottles, and what have you. In some places you find running sewage in public spaces. In compounds you find doors to human dwellings opposite hips of dirty garbage. And this has been the case for fifty two years and it is getting worse.

This garbage could cause cholera, in fact it has caused cholera at intervals. This garbage stinks. Some people have become billionaires by harnessing this garbage through garbage collection and recycling. Garbage is money. Garbage collection can be turned into massive employment opportunities.

In Zambia, this garbage, this stinking garbage, could be the source of massive youth employment, the solution to the high levels of youth unemployment and the government’s claim to having solved the high levels of youth unemployment. Begging youth cannot be choosers. If the youth are employed cleaning garbage everyday at reasonable rates throughout Zambia, the face of Zambia would be magical. The government doesn’t have to look for a home-run employment enterprise for youth, garbage collection and beautifying Zambia can do.  By fore – going  one Presidential or Foreign Affairs Ministerial trip abroad thousands  of youth can be employed to clean garbage in Zambia.

Rural youth should not be forgotten. Roads built under colonialism have all collapsed. Rural youth can be made to straighten them by filling them with new soil and rocks throughout the year and into the future.
Opportunities for youth employment are staring us right in our faces day in and day out. There is garbage collection, road construction, agricultural production, repair of houses in shanty compounds and what have you. Success is guaranteed. And the unemployed youth cannot be choosers or else we send them to Cuba to cut sugarcanes, harvest  mangoes and oranges and plant rice and live happily ever after.

Dr. Munyonzwe Hamalengwa teaches Law at the School of Law at Zambian Open University.