Tanzania, according to the 2012 national census, has 15.3 million youth aged between 18 and 40, or 33 per cent of the country’s population of 45 million people. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) shows that 9.6 million youth aged from 18 to 40 live in rural areas, while 5.7 million are in urban areas. However, the employment profile report compiled by NBS in 2012 shows that there were only 1.55 million people employed in the formal sector, with 64 per cent and 36 per cent working in the private and public sectors, respectively.
The total annual earnings per employee was an average of Sh8.8 million ($5,000) in 2012 whereby the monthly average earnings for employees in the public sector was Sh671,000 ($400), about twice the monthly average earnings in the private sector, which stood at Sh307,000 ($200). The total wage bill for both the public and private sectors in 2012 was Sh8.8 trillion ($5.2 billion), according to NBS data.
The survey further revealed that there were 126,073 existing job opportunities in 2012, whereby technician and associate professionals had the largest number of vacancies, which was 60.5 per cent in the formal sector, while professionals were second with 18.4 per cent, followed by service workers and shopkeepers at 7.5 per cent. To put things into simple perspective, the total number of employees in Tanzania in both the private and public sectors in 2012 was equivalent to just 10 per cent of the number of youth aged between 18 and 40.
On average, youth start working at the age of 25, depending on the time spent in primary and tertiary education. Now, according to the Mail & Guardian Africa, 10 million youth enter the job market annually in Africa. Education is vital to ensuring Africa’s youth accumulate skills to enter the job market and start an independent livelihood.
Over the last two decades, Africa has seen rapid progress towards universal primary education, with nearly all countries having implemented policies to ensure free access. But as more children are completing primary school, the demand for secondary schools is growing. Alhough the African average shows that approximately only half of its youth will be enrolled in secondary school (44 per cent female, 51 per cent male), countries like Ghana, Swaziland, Cape Verde, Botswana and the Seychelles have more than 90 per cent of both boys and girls.
But, what are the most burning issues for our youth? According to the study, sex, jobs and money were the top issues in the minds of millions of youth in Tanzania and elsewhere around Africa. But many African youth are not making it to school, leaving them trapped in a cycle of poverty and with fewer opportunities.
Approximately 38 per cent of girls and 35 per cent of boys are out of school in Africa, the highest in the world. While Niger presents the worst case scenario with 78 per cent of youth out of school, Botswana, South Africa, the Seychelles and Kenya stand out as notable exceptions, with less than 5 per cent of all adolescents out of school.
However, the good news is that today’s young people in sub-Saharan Africa are the best-educated generation ever. The increased access to education has given them the skills to be effective in the labour force, but it also presents a significant threat to political stability if there are not enough jobs to go around. Between 2000 and 2008, Africa’s working-age population increased by 25 per cent from 443 million to 550 million.
If these trends continue, by 2040 the continent’s working-age population will be the largest in the world at 1 billion. International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that although 73 million new jobs were created in sub-Saharan Africa between 2000 and 2008, only a fifth of those jobs went to young people. The report further states that the countries that are best dealing with this—and those that are lagging— are surprising.
More than three-quarters of all youth aged 15 to 24 in Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Eritrea and Tanzania are working or looking for a job. This is compared to South Africa that has a youth labour force participation rate of only 25 per cent while Algeria was the big shocker on the continent with only 9 per cent of its female youth participating in the labour force.
Along with jobs, a subject that also gains prominence among youth was sex, as Africa’s young people make the transition from childhood to adulthood, entering their reproductive years. This makes it important for the youth to have access to sexual and reproductive health information and services so they can use contraception, prevent unintended pregnancy and decide if and when to have children.
The average adolescent fertility rate is 91 out of 1,000 women aged between 15 and 19 years–the highest in the world although there were large disparities between countries. For example, Libya had two whilst Niger had 192.
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