Tanzanian Government commends the support of ILO and other UN agencies in its struggle to reduce youth unemployment

Dar es Salaam (ILO News) : During a national youth employment knowledge sharing forum, by the government of Tanzania, Honorary Anthony Mavunde, Deputy State Minister for Labour, Youth, Employment and Persons with disabilities, acknowledged the support of the ILO and partner UN agencies in the fight against the rising youth unemployment in the country.

The knowledge forum, which was organized in Dodoma on December 6, 2016, highlighted the areas supported by the UN joint programme comprising of ILO, UNIDO, FAO and UN Women: facilitating youth employment in agriculture sector, supporting business incubations, supporting entrepreneurship and business skills development and provision of direct and indirect financial support.

Referring to the statistics that show a decline of youth unemployment from 13.4 percent in 2006 to 11.7 percent in 2014, Hon. Anthony Mavunde, warned that:

“ …this is still on the higher side especially for growing economies like Tanzania…. its effects manifest in different ways impacting on economic and social settings especially in slowing down economic growth and poverty reduction efforts…more work needs to be done to empower, educate youth on different opportunities which can be used to fight against this scourge”

He further pointed out the factors that fuel youth unemployment in Tanzania as limited start-up capital, skills mismatch, low entrepreneurial behaviour and negative attitudes towards certain types of jobs among the youth and insufficient production and business

As part of the solution to the youth unemployment challenge, he proposed promoting conducive investment climate for investment in sectors with higher employment creation multipliers so as to maintain unemployment rate below 7 percent by 2020, promotion of micro and small, medium and large industries and facilitating access to self employment, employable and entrepreneurship skills to enhance labour market competitiveness and productivity.

Ms. Mary Kawar, ILO Country Director for Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, said that the UN addresses the youth unemployment challenges by engaging public and private institutions that can create conducive business environment and this has borne fruits.

“One year of implementing the Joint Programme in Youth Employment has allowed the UN to reach more than 800 young farmers, placed more than 224 graduates in 86 Micro, Small and Medium-size Enterprises and facilitated the Recognition of Prior Learning for more than 2700 young women and men.”

She further emphasized that the youth employment agenda, including in agriculture, should be pursued as a multi-sectoral issue. Systematic integration of multiple policies and strategies in infrastructure, education, health and manufacturing are therefore among the key priorities.

H.E. Katarina Rangnitt, Ambassador of Sweden to Tanzania, further noted that her country’s mission is to contribute to a fair industrialization and sustainable growth in Tanzania, which requires decent job creation for all explaining that progress in areas such as anti-corruption, rights and social dialogue, skills development, working conditions, technological transfers and tax collection can contribute to inclusive growth in different ways.

Information on UN joint support to Tanzania

The joint UN programme in Tanzania, focuses on five high impact priority areas of sustainable enterprise development, decent work for youth, enhancing agriculture productivity, skills development and building labour market information systems. The UN commits to continue to support youth involvement in agriculture and other sectors for decent jobs creation in selected sub-sectors through the implementation of the United Nations Development Assistance Plan (2016 -2021). These initiatives are done in collaboration with a variety of public and private sectors and market development programmes in selected regions of Tanzania.