Africa-Press – Tanzania. Addressing the press yesterday in Dar es Salaam, RMF chief executive officer, Cynthia Bavo, said as it is almost four years since Ruge Mutahaba’s untimely demise, youth unemployment is a pivotal topic that needs a thorough discussion on the way forward.
In addressing the unemployment problem, Bavo called for investments in long-term multi-stakeholder partnerships to create more income-generating opportunities in the formal and informal sector, advocating for inclusive hiring practices among employers and making jobs and opportunities accessible and visible to the youth
“The scale and complexity of youth unemployment in Tanzania cannot be solved by a single actor in the labour market ecosystem. There is a need for multi-stakeholder partnerships that will create formal sector jobs and support young informal workers and entrepreneurs to transition to formality,” she said.
According to her, it is through collective action that we can accelerate youth economic inclusion at a large scale.
She explained the importance of inclusive hiring in solving youth unemployment especially for women and marginalised youth who have much harder time breaking into the labour market due to discrimination.
Solving youth unemployment at a wider scale will also require a shift in how employers evaluate the young person’s capability.
She said that there’s a need to move away from exclusionary indicators like work experience and educational qualifications.
“These indicators keep a lot of capable young Tanzanians out of work. One of the things that we are doing as a foundation, is engaging with employers on alternative capability indicators in order to support more inclusive hiring,” said Bavo.
John Ulanga, RMF board member stressed about making jobs and opportunities accessible and visible to young people on internet data costs and how these hinder young people from accessing jobs and opportunities that are shared online.
“It is not enough to create jobs and opportunities; they also have to be visible and accessible to young people. Unfortunately, internet data costs are difficult to cover when you don’t have a source of income,” he said.
According to him, there is an opportunity for the foundation to partner with telecommunication companies and innovators in order to solve the unemployment problem.
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