Essay on unemployment and education in Rwanda 1.

Introduction A countrys growth and development results from a number of things; namely the allocation of its resources whether natural or artificial. Most importantly, no country can ever be developed without the active involvement of its citizens. This means that a countrys citizens are the ones that put into action all other resources otherwise the later would be considered as idle and hence no positive results and no economic growth. This issue is very understandable because even when the labour market is not skilled, the particular country will face a big challenge in the sense that it will be very expensive to import experts to do a specific job. On the other hand unskilled situation may lead to unemployment in a given country which will further be a cost to individuals suffering the situation and a cost to the society. The individuals who become unemployed suffer a loss of income, shock and frustration (P. Mohr, L. Fourie, 2004). These authors also argue that unemployment is a loss to the society since labour is perishable and it can not be saved and used at later stage if it was not used while available. In less developed countries like mine, Rwanda, this situation is so dangerous among the youth since the big number of the countrys population is young. Among other causes of this unemployment are likely to be the lack of necessary skills to enter the job market, less employment opportunities, lack of carrier shapes, poor education system, high rate of population growth, and so on. In this particular essay a much attention and focus will be paid to the country of Rwanda whereby a detailed discussion will be given on how Rwanda can reform the educational system to give young people the right skills and opportunities to enter the workforce. Furthermore, major problems that young people face in Rwanda will be highlighted, and suggestions on who should take a lead to implement the policy will also be cited. To clearly understand the problem a description of the situation in Rwanda is going to be discussed in the following part.

2. Unemployment and education situation analysis in Rwanda Today more than ever before, youth unemployment presents one of the real challenges to the international community. This is felt more acutely in Rwanda, which faces many developmental problems. After the socio-economic crisis of the 1994 war and genocide Rwanda found itself in a very critical situation with a very bad economic recession and other social problems associated to the tragedy. Though, the economy got improved from time to time with the help of major partners and Rwandan government undertakings one of the major challenges to the economic development is that unemployment is growing at a very high rate especially among the youth both the educated, skilled and semi skilled. This is due to the fact that the job market is not expanding at the same rate as the competition. Some of the causes to this high rate of unemployment relate to shortage of technical skills to meet the labour market demand; a biased attitude towards traditional agriculture and livestock farming ; low level of modernisation in the agricultural sector that employs about 90% of the population (J. W. Mellor; August 2002). Other causes include low level of investment due to insufficient domestic savings; high illiteracy rate; poor education and training policies; lack of incubation support structures for employment creation and inadequate national framework for coordinating and monitoring employment promotion. The statistics show that in Rwanda the active population is estimated at 4 492 000 individuals of whom 44.77% are men and 55.23% are women. This population is found particularly in the rural areas. Among this population, 2 334 000 (51.96%) are young in the 15-29 years age bracket, and 1 153 000 are less than 20 years old. The number of the less than 17 years old is 3 973 022 of the total population. The working population grows rapidly at an average annual rate of about 3%. Moreover, the working population is also characterized by an abundant inadequately trained labor force. According to estimates, almost 37.50% have never been to school, 55.56% received primary school education, and 2.03% have post primary level of education, 4.40% received secondary school education and about 0.51% have university

education. The self-employed are 76.81% and family helpers 15.22% both representing almost 92.03% and mainly in the agricultural and livestock sectors (about 87.63%) with often no skills and education. This is as a result of an under developed economic structure dominated by primary and subsistence production mainly in the informal sector with low productivity and added value, which always leads to underemployment. The problem of underemployment in Rwanda is for particular attention. Defined as a situation where part of the population is idle for some or most of the working hours, underemployment in Rwanda is highly present by the fact that the private sector is largely under developed and this makes the public sector to be the largest employer compared to the private sector but it also employs less than 1% of the employable population. The agricultural sector is said to be the largest employer but this sector is largely less productive as the average land holding per person is very small at less than one hector per person. This leads to low productivity and incomes to the rural majority of whom are youth and women who would otherwise be employed in other sectors. This combined with low skills and lack of alternative employment opportunities leads to a vicious circle of poverty. Therefore one can conclude that the large number of people employed in the agricultural sector face a problem of disguised (hidden) unemployment unless the agricultural sector undergoes transformation and modernization.

As said earlier, one of the major challenges in Rwanda is that unemployment is growing at a very high rate especially among the youth both the educated, skilled and semi skilled. This is due to the fact that the job market is not expanding at the same rate as the competition.

For instance, in Kigali city (the main and capital city of Rwanda), unemployment rate ranges between 19% and 20%, the number of the jobless stands at 120,200 people, representing 19.93% of the urban population. Rural population survey (2005) showed a very low unemployment rate (11.4%). However,

it should be pointed out that most of those who called themselves farmers have no land and that cultivable area per capita was 0.12 hectares. In general the average unemployment rate in the country was about 15.5% (2005) and affected almost 696,260 people, of which more that 50% is the youth between the ages of 15-29.

Furthemore, education is an important variable that can contribute to the reduction of unemployment among the youth if relatively structured. Currently the teaching language for primary years 1 to 3 is Kinyarwanda. In years 4 to 6 and seondary schools this becomes English or French. Statisticss 2002/03 showed that in Rwanda there were 2172 Schools, 1,636,563 Pupils and 26,024 Teachers (85.2% qualified). Despite some major achievements in Rwanda's attempts to achieve Universal Primary Education, it is currently said to be one of the countries with worst repetition rates in the sub-saharan region. As regards to secondary school figures the 2005/2006 statistics showed a number of 405 Schools, 179,153 Pupils and 6,329 Teachers (48.0% professionally qualified), the gender Ratio was 49,5% Boys 50,5% Girls. The governement is putting much emphasis on science and technology subjects which will enable students to enter univesties of sciences and technologies to be able to afford jobs in those areas and compete on the international market which is much directed in the areas of sciences and technologiy. It should be noted that an estimated 20% of primary school leavers only get access to public secondary schools and about 10% go for private secondary schools; most students who afford private schools come from urban areas, otherwise rural pupils get out of school after failing the nationa exam which would allow them to enter public secondary schools. They then become workers in the farms and most of them tend to go in urban areas to find work but with no adequate skills and they definetly become street kids. There are 20 high education institutes (6 Public / 14 Private) as far as higher learning in Rwanda is concerned. The first university in Rwanda (National University of Rwanda NUR) was opened by the government in 1963. Only 49 students enrolled initially at NUR. but by the year 1999/2000 this had risen to 4550. In 1997/98 Rwanda had a total of 5,571

students in higher education. Today this stands at 26,796, of which 39% of students are female. Throughout the Higher Education system some 100 PhDs are held, the bulk of them at NUR. Areas of research include agriculture, livestock and the training of farm managers. A system of Night School University has been established to widen access to university. But this remains somehow questionnable as regards to the quality of courses being offered. However, a very low percentage of secondary school leavers access universtity studies which, on the other side, means that the remaining try to find work in both public sector and private sector. This is a very big challenge to the country because most of these students do not manage to find work since their skills are still limited and inadequate to match with the job market requirements. In addition, most of jobs require experiences which the students do not have since they have not worked before or underwent any industrial training to acquaint themselves with working environment. Life is very difficult for this youth and they are demoralised and finally loose confidence. Self employment to the young people in Rwanda is like a nightmare since initial capital for them is very hard to get.The luck ones may get very low paying jobs to earn the living. Nevertheless, the situation of youth unemployment in Rwanda can be improved through enhancing skills development and reforming the eduction system to get young people with right skills to enter the workforce with nessary requirements. The model to tackle this situation is discussed in details in the following part.

3. Suggestive ideas about education reform and increasing employment opportunities to young people in Rwanda.

Of course the Government of Rwanda is a key to success for this model; that is why most of the ideas and suggestion given throughout this part will be much concerning the government although the role of the private sector will also be discussed along in this part. The Government of Rwanda must redefine and undertake the development of technical education and vocational training sector which is still undeveloped by sensitizing the population on the role and importance of technical education and vocational training with a view of erasing the existing negative perception about this type of education and making it effective; mapping of technical and vocational education institutions and fields to be established on the basis of comparative advantages of each area; training needs assessments inline with labour market needs have to be realized and utilized with a view to a better training-employment link; elaborating a policy and a law on skills development and vocational training and encouraging entrepreneurs to establish vocational training centers. In addition, the high education must also be reformed by improving access, quality and relevance of education in all higher institutions of learning through the rehabilitation and construction of academic infrastructures; strengthening information and communication technologies in the education system; developing education modules that meets the new needs of the labor market in the current world trends; promoting research and technology among the youth students; training and recruiting highly qualified teachers with adequate teaching and technical skills; and encouraging private investments in the education sector particularly higher education. Furthermore, Programs for youth employment promotion must be developed by establishing programs to fight against all forms of child labor; programs for career advice providing information about employment opportunities and labor market information to the youth; programs for the integration of the youth in enterprises through pre-employment internship courses; vocational training courses that must be carried out in approved centers, enterprises or production workshops; self-employment and micro-enterprise programs. The aim of this program is to encourage entrepreneurship among the youth; and finally support programs to rural youth employment development.

Apart from redefining education and training system employment opportunities can be created by the strategy of labor intensive. Though, providing a short time solution, labor intensive strategy may be helpful to younger and less qualified people, this may be done through Construction and Public works Enterprises (Civil Engineering, Roadway maintenance system and drainage, allotment and development of sites, construction of Town Ships accommodations, etc), agricultural sector enterprises (marshes development, plantation works, sorting and conditioning of industrial agricultural crops such as tea and coffee), works at the factory in relation with raw materials and fuel transport (handling, gatekeeper, messenger and industrial guarding works). Job opportunities for a great number of young people under 25 years will be mostly oriented towards the labor intensive sector as well as activities of small enterprises providing services to the population or enterprises. Moreover, as a long term solution, employment opportunities can be boosted though the creation of enterprise support. This can be done by making available to potential entrepreneurs especially the youth a list of high profile projects or enterprises and give them opportunities to develop and create their own. Also, to improve employment opportunities to the Rwanda youth the government in partnership with private operators must increase employment opportunities by mediating job seekers and job providers; foster the integration of youth and other job seekers in the labor market; support the establishment of micro-enterprises to the young people; support entrepreneurship and self employment among the youth; create a partnership network between information seekers and information providers regarding the labour market; develop and implement a mechanism for communication and dissemination of gathered and processed information of the labour market. Finally, the Government must create structures to support entrepreneurship innovations from the youth and more specifically avail financial resources for well structured projects developed by young people.

4. Conclusion 5. References

 J. W. Mellor; August 2002 Productivity Increasing Rural Public Works- An Interim Approach to Poverty Reduction in Rwanda. P. Mohr, L. Fourie, 2004, Economics for South African Students, Third Edition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Rwanda.