Ugandan politicians are using the country's jobless young people as pawns to
advance their own ambitions
Ugandan politicians are playing a dangerous game with the country's legions
of unemployed youth. Instead of tackling the problem, leaders on both sides
of the political equation are exploiting jobless youngsters for their own
ends. In doing so they risk sending the east African nation into a spiral of
political and social upheaval.
Uganda has the world's youngest population, with 78% of its 34m citizens
below the age of 30, according to a 2011 report by the International Youth
Foundation, an international charity based in Baltimore.
It also has one of sub-Saharan Africa's highest rates of youth unemployment,
according to a 2012 study by ActionAid International Uganda (AAIU), an NGO.
The study sampled both rural and urban youth and found that 61.6% of
Uganda's youths (those between 12 and 30 and not enrolled in primary,
secondary or tertiary education) were jobless.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) puts the figure far lower, at
7.3%, but the ILO's definition of youth unemployment is "unrealistic",
according to AAIU project co-ordinator Rebecca Kukundakwe.
The ILO's definition excludes anyone who has worked for "even one hour in
any economic activity ... during a specified recent period (usually the past
four weeks)", according to the ILO website. "Our perspective is that if
someone is not in continuous and meaningful employment, he or she is not
employed, especially when it comes to the youth," Ms Kukundakwe said.
Like most sub-Saharan African countries, Uganda has enjoyed healthy economic
growth. Its GDP, fuelled by copious flows of foreign direct investment and a
boom in the retail and construction sectors, has grown by about 5% per year
over the last decade, according to the World Bank.
But this progress has still not been fast enough to create the economic
opportunities needed to absorb the large pool of young people joining the
labour force every year.
Uganda's 3.2% annual population growth is one of the world's highest,
according to a 2013 report by Uganda's official population policy
department. "Youth unemployment in Uganda is a time bomb," Ms Kukundakwe
told Africa in Fact. "We have a category of young people who are energetic
[and] mobile, but who are not being utilised. Like the saying goes, 'An idle
mind is the devil's workshop.'"
Ms Kukundakwe pointed specifically to an "ominous" development: the growing
tendency of politicians--both in government and among the opposition - to
use unemployed youths to advance their own agendas. Politicians pay cheap
bribes to idle youths to stage violent demonstrations, she said.
"There's patronage. We have a lot of young people who are not concerned
about their own country but are only interested in how much they can get
from politics, and politicians are exploiting this." Uganda's president,
Yoweri Museveni, in power since 1986, faces growing opposition as failed
government policies and runaway corruption fuel popular anger.
Uganda's poor urban youth, in particular, are enraged by politicians who
they see as privileged and self-serving, and whose affluence has come at
their expense. The majority of Uganda's jobless youths live in cities and
towns, according to Ms Kukundakwe.
It is in these urban centres that political violence has flared repeatedly
since the 2011 presidential elections. In the wake of those elections, a
wave of civil unrest swept the capital Kampala, the capital, and several
other large towns, including Jinja and Mbale in the east, as well as Mbarara
and Kabale in the south-west, championed by Kizza Besigye, then the leader
of the country's largest opposition party, Forum for Democratic Change.
Stone-throwing young mobs took centre stage in these riots. The government
responded with a deadly crackdown that left at least nine dead and scores
wounded, according to a 2012 report by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based
advocacy group.
Although government action stemmed the unrest, violent confrontations
between opposition youth and security forces have since become routine
events in major towns. Markets and public bus terminals in downtown Kampala,
crowded with idle youngsters, attract opposition politicians eager to rouse
popular anger against the government.
Images of the resulting violent clashes have become regular features on the
country's news pages. Last January 9th and March 6th, youngsters gathered in
downtown Kampala to hear Mr Besigye and four MPs expelled last year from the
ruling National Resistance Movement. Police used teargas and rubber bullets
to disperse the youthful crowd.
President Museveni's government has long admitted that Uganda's high youth
unemployment is a problem, but has done little to combat it. However some
officials in his government, unnerved by the recent spate of youth-led
clashes, are starting to propose solutions.
Pius Bigirimana, the permanent secretary in the gender, labour and social
development ministry and whose portfolio is responsible for youth welfare,
oversees a $106m programme launched last January, which hopes to provide
job-training skills or start-up capital to 1.4m people under 30. Critics of
the project, however, question the government's intentions.
Gerald Karuhanga, an independent MP, claims this programme is a politically
expedient way to win youth loyalty ahead of the 2016 elections. "The timing,
and the way it's being implemented, already shows the intention has more to
do with political mobilisation than [a desire] to create employment and
eliminate poverty among the youth," he said.
Mr Karuhanga is concerned that Mr Museveni's government intends to hand out
the money directly to young people--as it has done before, with predictably
dismal results.
The government launched a programme in the late 1990s called Entadikwa
(Luganda for "seed capital"), which provided young people with small,
unsecured loans, ostensibly to help them start small businesses.
The programme failed, however, as Mr Bigirimana admitted to Africa in Fact.
Recipients used many of these handouts to buy alcohol and pay bride price,
according to news reports. A similar programme, dubbed Bonabagagawale
(Luganda for "prosperity for all") was rolled out in early 2000s and
suffered the same fate.
When the government hands out the money directly, it creates the sense that
these are simply contributions made in return for political support, Mr
Karuhanga said. Instead, the money should be transferred to microfinance
institutions, which could vet potential beneficiaries and provide and
collect the loans, he argued. Uganda has a healthy network of more than 100
separate credit providers that could support such a scheme, according to the
finance ministry.
Mr Bigirimana has also proposed a more radical measure to reduce youth
unemployment: limit the number of children a woman is legally allowed to
bear.
Uganda has the world's seventh-highest fertility rate, with an average of
6.2 children per woman, according to 2013 figures from the United
States-based Population Reference Bureau (PRB). Uganda is poised to see its
population of 34m leap to 55.4m by 2025 and 113.9m by mid-century, according
to PRB projections.
"We should come up with a policy that limits the number of children someone
should produce to four," Mr Bigirimana said. "If you produce five, you
should go to jail."
His suggestion, however, might find stiff resistance from his own
government. President Museveni has argued that Uganda's high population
growth is not a problem. Instead, the solution is to expand the industrial
and services sectors.
"The problem is not population per se," Mr Museveni told a July 2012 summit
on family planning in London. "Africa, or in this particular case Uganda,
needs to metamorphose from a pre-capitalist, quasi-feudal society to a
middle-class, skilled working-class society. That social metamorphosis will
inevitably bring down the population growth."
There is some truth in Mr Museveni's stance, argued Deepali Khanna, director
of youth learning at the MasterCard Foundation, the Toronto-based
philanthropic arm of the payments services company.
High population growth rates are partly responsible for soaring unemployment
among Ugandan and African youth, she said. But insufficient economic growth,
small formal labour markets, and insufficient experience and skills also
play a role.
Ms Khanna also blames "skills mismatches" in the Ugandan economy - when job
seekers do not have the skills demanded by the labour market - and low
economic activity in the countryside.
"In rural areas, young people largely work in the agriculture sector, where
the lack of agricultural productivity, enterprise opportunities, financial
services and stable work inhibits their ability to move out of poverty," she
added.
Youth unemployment in Uganda is rooted in demographic growth and economic
breakdown. It will require more than politically expedient solutions. As
long as cynical politicians use jobless youth to further their own
ambitions, instead of searching for a solution, the situation will only get
worse.