Africa

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Youth at the Grand Médine town hall in Dakar, Senegal. Senegal has a large youth population, half of which is under the age of 18. By 2025, 376,000 youth are expected to enter the job market that offers only 30,000 jobs. And this number will rise to 411,000 in 2030, according to the Wilson Centre. Credit: Samuelle Paul Banga/IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi
MBABANE, Feb 4 2020 (IPS)

Africa’s inability to produce adequate skills is negatively impacting its economic growth.

In fact, the continent is not getting a good return even on the minimal investment it is making in education, says Thembinkosi Dlamini, an economist and senior extractives lead at Oxfam South Africa.

He was responding to one of the main findings in the African Development Bank’s (AfDB) 2020 Africa Outlook Report, released last week. Titled Developing Africa’s Workforce for the Future, the report  notes that most African countries at all levels of income exhibit lower educational attainment, both in quantity and quality.

Thembinkosi Dlamini told IPS that education in Africa remains untransformed to meet the skills of the future. He attributed this to lack of foresight and dwindling public investments in education.

The report notes that many African countries’ student expenditure is the lowest in the world, at $533 for primary and $925 for high school. This is despite the fact that African countries allocated an average of 5 percent of GDP and 16 percent of government budget to education – just above the United Nations recommended lower limit of 4 and 15 percent, respectively from 2010-17.

As a result, Africa’s growth has not been inclusive because of the lack of jobs in high-productivity sectors such as manufacturing. Moreover, large swaths of the population are stuck in low-productivity, low-paying jobs in traditional agriculture and informal sectors.

“The slow pace of structural transformation stems from shortcomings in human capital reflecting low skills and education levels,” reads the report. 

Only about a third of African countries have achieved inclusive growth. The report observes that countries with better education outcomes and higher rates of structural change are more likely to achieve inclusive growth.

“Countries with active inequality-reducing policies have better prospects of reducing extreme poverty more by 2030,” states the report.

The report also points out that there is a lack of complementarity between physical and human capital in African countries resulting in a limited contribution of education to increasing labour productivity growth at the macro level.

“Public investments in both education and infrastructure can yield greater benefits in promoting long-term growth than investing only in education or only in infrastructure because both types of investment strongly complement each other,” reads the report.

Speaking at the launch of the report in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, AfDB president, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, said physical infrastructure, while important, is not enough to drive much needed greater growth and productivity of African economies.

“African countries should accelerate investments as well as the development of human capital,” said Adesina.

Unemployable with a master’s in engineering

The lack of investments or available job market is a case in point for Mkhonzeni Dlamini’s [no relation to Thembinkosi Dlamini]. 

Mkhonzeni Dlamini (32) graduated with a BA in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Eswatini six years ago. He thought getting a job would be easy because Eswatini’s government had classified his qualification as one of the priority courses owing to the shortage of engineers in the country. However, Mkhonzeni Dlamini failed to get a job the following year. He then decided to pursue a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering in Taiwan, hoping that this would improve his chances. He graduated in 2018 and returned home.

“Even now, I’m unemployed,” he told IPS, adding: “I don’t understand why a person with my skill is failing to get a job considering that the country needs engineers to develop.”

The visibly frustrated Mkhonzeni Dlamini blamed this situation to the “government’s poor planning”, saying that there are many other young graduates, including doctors, who are idling at home because there are no jobs.

“The government doesn’t seem to have a training plan to match available jobs. In fact, the government doesn’t seem to know how many students are on training and plan to create jobs for those graduates,” said Mkhonzeni Dlamini.

Having searched for a job since his return in 2018, he is now considering leaving the continent.

“Like many African graduates who are frustrated like me, we’re now thinking of going back to the countries that colonised us,” he said. Mkhonzeni Dlamini is exploring possibilities of getting a job in the United Kingdom.

Educating Africa’s youth for jobs of the future

Meanwhile, Adesina said youth unemployment must be given top priority. With 12 million graduates entering the labour market each year and only three million of them getting jobs, the mountain of youth unemployment is rising annually.

He said given the fast pace of changes, driven by the 4th industrial revolution – from artificial intelligence to robotics, machine learning, quantum computing – Africa must invest more in re-directing and re-skilling its labour force and, especially the youth, to effectively participate.

“The youth must be prepared for the jobs of the future – not the jobs of the past,” said Adesina.

Thembinkosi Dlamini agreed.

“We haven’t seen academic papers recently testing the relevance of the education to current and future needs of the economy,”Thembinkosi Dlamini told IPS, adding: “The report correctly points out the high skills mismatch particularly amongst youth employees [saying] that Africans are miseducated.”

Leave no country, no youth behind

Despite the limitations in the workforce, the report notes some success stories on the continent.

In 2019, East Africa was the fastest-growing region, and North Africa continued to make the largest contribution to Africa’s overall GDP growth, due mainly to Egypt’s strong growth momentum. Moreover, six African countries are among the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies: Rwanda at 8.7 percent, Ethiopia 7.4 percent, Côte d’Ivoire 7.4 percent, Ghana 7.1 percent, Tanzania 6.8 percent, and Benin 6.7 percent.

Former Liberian President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who attended the launch together with ministers and other dignitaries, described these six economies as the “stars among us”.

“We want to see more, particularly countries like mine, which have been left behind, so that more can be done to give them the support that they need,” she said.

• Economic growth in Africa is estimated at 3.4 percent for 2019, about the same as in 2018. Although stable, this growth rate is 0.6 percentage point less than the rate projected in the 2019 African Economic Outlook. It is also below the decadal average growth for the region (5 percent).
• The slower than expected growth is due partly to the modest expansion of the continent’s “big five” — Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, and South Africa — which jointly grew at an average rate of only 3.1 percent, compared with the average of 4.0 percent for the rest of the continent’s economies, notes the report.
• Africa’s GDP growth is marginally above the world average of 3.0 percent for 2019 and well above the average for advanced economies at 1.7 percent.
• It also exceeds that of emerging and developing economies outside Africa, excluding China and India. 

While the statistics matter, AfDB’s Adesina said the faces behind the figures should be prioritised.

“And every single day we work, let’s look at the real lives behind the statistics. Let’s hear their voices. Let’s feel their aspirations,” said Adesina.

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• Bridging Africa’s Great Gender-Financing Divide
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The post Africa Must Prioritise Upskilling its Unemployed Youth, Development Bank Urges appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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By Dr. Palitha Kohona
CANBERRA, Australia, Feb 4 2020 (IPS)

I love visiting Canberra in the summer. The air is clean. The water in lake Burley Griffin is crystal clear and the “go boats” merrily bob up and down with their wine sipping occupants while black swans frolic in peace.

Canberrans, who are habitually relaxed, become more friendly. Clothes worn become decidedly casual and barely adequate.

BBQs get lit and the smell of burnt meat and beer induced laughter pervade the backyards. And the “laid back like a lizard on a summer’s day” becomes more than a casual expression.

But this year was different. Summer temperatures continued to establish new records. The capital clocked up an unprecedented 43 degrees Celsius, a figure more familiar in Middle Eastern cities.

Bush fires have continued to ravage the countryside for months, destroying hundreds of thousands of acres of forest and farm land (an area bigger than Scotland has been consumed by the flames so far) and thousands of houses.

The Canberra airport was closed for an afternoon due to the threat posed by an expanding grass fire close by.

Farm animals, by the thousands, have perished in the intense heat and insurance claims are expected to exceed one billion Dollars. Millions of native animals, some endangered, have also been wiped out.

Thick smoke caused by the fires blanketed major cities, including Canberra, turning day into night in this normally sun swept land of clear skies, raising fears of possible long-term health implications.

On some days, the air quality in the capital Canberra, was considered to be the worst in any capital city in the world. Restaurants suffered seriously with customers staying at home in droves due to the thick smoke hovering over the city.

The Rose sipping sophisticates just stayed at home. Adding insult to injury, a cricket match at the Manuka Oval in the city was cancelled due to the smoke.

The simmering debate on climate change boiled over, even raising concern in Davos, but the deniers, some in high places, continued to shy away from the hard issues, issues that are likely to impact on the future of our planet.

An unbelievably ferocious hail storm seriously damaged over 30,000 cars in Canberra and resulted in a flood of insurance claims. The city, nay the country, is not equipped to deal with so many modes of transport being damaged in such a short period.

Certainly. it will not be possible to replace the damaged cars any time soon. The city may have to adopt innovative solutions to cope with this challenge, including expanding its fleet of buses and even providing free rides. Canberra, enamoured with the private car for so long, may have to get used to public buses and even using the much- denigrated light rail service.

Canberra folk might even begin to tolerate an additional few minutes in daily travel time, which is not even an issue in other capital cities! It may even be a blessing in disguise providing more texting and emailing time for the commuter without running afoul of the police.

A chorus of messages of sympathy poured in from world leaders. The world was genuinely shocked at what Australia was experiencing. But it was heartening that the country, faced with this unprecedented catastrophe, rallied quickly and methodically set about the task of containing the fires, rebuilding and restoring.

The example set to the world was truly impressive. Many good practices were actually implemented.

Much has been said about what could be done to avoid or at least minimize damage of this nature in the future, not only in Australia but elsewhere in the world where unexpectedly severe natural phenomena have begun to cause widespread disruption to the lives of ordinary people and national economies. The debate will continue.

But to facilitate discussion, and the possible adoption of appropriate measures in response in the future, we will propose some ideas gleaned from Australia’s experience and experiences elsewhere in the world. Bush fires in Australia will continue to occur in the future. Some will be more devastating than others.

Why not establish a centrally controlled dedicated fund to be accessed only in the event of a major natural disaster, especially bush fires. Other natural disasters like droughts, floods and tsunamis also can be covered.

This will be in the nature of a fund controlled by the central government and will obviate the need to scamper around to locate monetary resources after the event. In Australia and other federal jurisdictions, the primary responsibility for dealing with natural disasters will remain with the constituent states.

An interstate mechanism with individuals with experience and expertise in the field which could be activated at short notice might also help. A rich country like Australia should be capable of setting aside resources for this purpose given that natural disasters seem to be happening at all too frequent intervals.

Likewise, in Australia, the federal government could acquire a reserve of equipment, fire trucks, fixed wing aero planes, helicopters and other equipment to be kept ready to respond quickly in an emergency. The need to obtain equipment at short notice from overseas can thus be obviated.

What is more, Australia’s reserve stock of equipment could be lent to other countries in emergency situations. The occurrence of major forest fires has become a noticeable summer phenomenon in the northern hemisphere also. Tsunamis, floods, forest fires, etc occur regularly elsewhere in the region. While, it may be possible to recover the cost of making equipment available, the goodwill generated would also be considerable.

Operators of such equipment could be trained in advance. They could be members of the civil defense force who could be called up for duty at short notice. A pool of such trained personnel would be an asset readily available to be deployed to assist in any emergency situation.

In the meantime, Australia should also take a more proactive attitude towards anthropogenic climate change. There is a crescendo of voices around the world pushing governments to do more about climate change. It is an issue which has galvanized opinion in the past.

Historically, Australia played a leading role in global discussions in advocating measures to address environmental degradation, climate change, ozone depletion, hazardous waste, preservation of the Antarctica, sustainable development, etc. Australia spoke with a voice that commanded respect. It can continue to play a lead role and recover its moral authority without necessarily compromising its economic options.

In Australia, it is also vital to deal quickly with the seriously negative impact of the bush fires on tourism which has affected thousands of businesses and jobs. The tourist industry, a major employment generator, is hurting.

The images of the ferocious fires and the blanketing smoke beamed in to living rooms around the world cannot be erased overnight. A multi-media response is immediately required. It is important to acknowledge what happened honestly and highlight the proactive and businesslike manner in which the Australian people responded.

The bravery of ordinary volunteer firefighters and civilians, reflecting the nation’s “can do and we will spirit”, need to be given prominence in the media. The rapid recovery action taken, despite the odds, needs underlining.

Depending on the tourist market, people from those markets need to highlight Australia’s response in the different languages. Australia has been through much but the opportunity presented to demonstrate what it can do is significant.

As the lucky country reels under the impact of the fires, smoke, floods, heat and hail, it still remains the land of dreams for many.

*Dr Palitha Kohona, a former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the UN and Chief of the UN Treaty Section, has previously proposed the creation of a Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM) by the United Nations to deal with environmental emergencies.

The post Coping with Australia’s Surfeit of Natural Disasters & Lessons to be Learned appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Michael Lim Mah Hui
KUALA LUMPUR and PENANG, Feb 4 2020 (IPS)

Financialization has worsened inequality through various channels, including macroeconomic policies. For example, quantitative easing and low, if not negative interest rates have fuelled credit and asset price bubbles, while fiscal spending cuts have adversely affected those depending on government assistance.

Unequal gains
Inequalities have increased due to financialization. The rich benefit from more rentier options and government efforts to protect the value of financial assets. The main gains of financialization tend to go to those who most successfully speculate at low cost, and to the asset management and investment firms involved.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Financial globalization has been accompanied by increased income inequality and broad stagnation in real incomes of wage earners in OECD countries. These developments starkly contrast with the 1990s’ promises of ‘citizens as investors’ and agents for ‘democratizing finance’.

Financialization in high-income countries has transformed everyday life with more and more financial products (home mortgages, private health insurance, pensions, stocks, and other securities) needed to deal with future uncertainties no longer mitigated by the welfare state.

Financial globalization affects lives and livelihoods in developing countries somewhat differently. Financialization is less pronounced in the South than in the North as fewer people have access to the formal financial system. Middle class families seek asset-based welfare — via mortgage housing, insurance and pension funds — while financial inclusion may reach others.

Financialization enriches
As yields on long term securities plunge and asset prices surge, very low interest rates encourage companies, private equity, hedge funds and the rich to borrow even more to invest in financial assets, sending prices even higher.

Finance also increases inequality through greater wealth concentration thanks to exclusive wealth management services for rich clients who get favoured access to specialized services and structured, high yield products.

Corporations and wealthy individuals use the best available professional services for tax avoidance and evasion, often facilitated by banking secrecy.

Michael Lim Mah Hui

Private banking employs top fund managers to manage the wealth of rich clients, offering double digit returns while ordinary depositors have to accept modest interest rates on their deposits.

Rising debt and equity transactions have generated lucrative fees for bankers, traders, fund managers and private equity investors, mainly benefiting market players with means.

With finance capturing more profits than manufacturing, unlike before, those working for finance now secure much higher incomes compared to others. ‘Excessive’ financial sector salaries took off in the 1980s, reaching 40% just prior to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, with ‘rents’ accounting for 30-50% of this ‘excess’.

The protracted decline of real wages in the US and the UK has been enabled by new rules and laws favouring wealth owners over labour incomes. In the US, capital gains can be taxed a maximum of 20%, while the highest marginal tax rate for wages is 37%.

Financial inclusion
By contrast, the poor have less, but also costlier access to finance, and contribute more to financial gains for others, e.g., through subprime mortgages, or unsecured personal loans.

Stagnant or declining wages have imposed greater indebtedness on the poor, with finance reaping lucrative profits from such lending to households. Between 1960 and 2007, US household debt rose from 41% to 100% of annual GDP.

But the celebratory discourse of ‘financial inclusion’ presumes that everyone successfully manages their involvement in increasingly complex financial markets, and that light regulatory touches and ‘financial literacy’ effectively deter predatory financial practices.

With real wages for many not rising for decades, increased financial inclusion has meant greater indebtedness for many of them.

Some national financial authorities have tried to make financialization more inclusive through initiatives to reach the ‘unbanked’, e.g., via micro-finance schemes and ‘agent banking’, with technological innovation and FinTech showing potential in this regard.

Such technological innovations in finance have had mixed distributional consequences. Higher computing capacity has enabled financial innovations that enrich investors, with economies of scale, at the expense of the less tech savvy and less well informed. But innovations can also serve those with less means.

Vicious cycle
If inequality contributed to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, ‘unconventional’ monetary policy responses to the crisis, especially quantitative easing (QE), have also exacerbated inequality as QE works by raising financial asset prices.

With the earliest hints of recovery after 2008 and the bailouts, the ‘masters of the universe’ who had been pleading for them, claiming they were ‘too big to fail’, changed their tune, condemning fiscal efforts as irresponsible.

Financial crises thus offer opportunities for those with power and influence to secure reforms to their advantage. This also happened following the 1997-1998 Asian financial crises, after a decade of financial liberalization following military rule in South Korea.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) provided emergency credit, requiring major structural changes, including greater ‘labour market flexibility’, reducing workers’ bargaining power and reversing the rising wage shares and low inequality of growth before 1998.

The post Financialization Increases Inequality appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Woman gives birth to healthy baby in …., Democratic Republic of the Congo, facilitated by the delivery that day of emergency reproductive health kits. Credit: UNFPA

By Julitta Onabanjo, Shoko Arakaki and Sennen Hounton
GENEVA / JOHANNESBURG / KINSHASA, Feb 4 2020 (IPS)

Eleven-year-old “Anne” went to a health facility with her mother in the conflict-affected province of Ituri, in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. At first, she could barely tell her story.

Traumatized and frightened, she feared reprisal from her attackers. Painstakingly, she recounted the brutal rape she had suffered and the pain that she felt in her body. It took her a while to gain confidence in the service provider and to allow support for her recovery.

Today, Anne remains displaced with her mother, staying in a camp, as it is not safe for them to return home. With support and services, she has resumed some of her daily activities. She now plays with other children and will eventually return to school.

After decades of conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), women and girls continue to suffer disproportionately from the crisis. They also offer one of the best hopes for peace and stability.

In the camp with other displaced persons, Anne now plays a new role. She sensitizes her peers about gender-based violence and reproductive health and rights. When she speaks, others listen.

For this reason and more, local women and girls play an increasingly critical role in humanitarian action and recovery. With their survival strategies, they offer hope, resilience and solutions to long-lasting challenges.

It is time for increased support and funding to place the needs, rights and leadership of women and adolescent girls at the centre of humanitarian efforts.

As we celebrate the anniversary of the first peaceful political transition of power, there is renewed hope, and a genuine window of opportunity, to address and accelerate progress for gender equality.

In a historic first, the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has committed, through an addendum to the joint communique signed by the Prime Minister, to implement concrete actions to fight conflict related sexual violence.

The Congolese National Police and National Army have endorsed national plans to combat gender-based violence with zero tolerance for sexual violence, with a commitment to integrate the protection of women and children during military operations.

With this new momentum, there is no time to waste. Ongoing humanitarian situations now affect 12 of 26 provinces in the country, and recent floods and food insecurity place increased strain and hardship on women and families. The humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the world’s worst protracted crises.

The number of people who urgently require humanitarian assistance is up from 8.5 million in 2017 to 15.6 million in 2020, including 5 million people displaced from their homes.

Today, many survivors like Anne suffer psychological consequences, such as depression and trauma. Through the multi-stakeholder Call to Action on Protection from GBV in emergencies, which launched a roadmap in DRC in 2019, and the new national strategy to eliminate gender- based violence, concerted efforts are underway with a broad array of partners to strengthen the rule of law and accountability.

This must help thousands of survivors like Anne to rebuild their lives.

Investing in safety, dignity and health

As stated by Mark Lowcock, UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, “Doing more to strengthen our support to women and girls in humanitarian crises is in everyone’s interest.”

UNFPA is working with the Government, the UN system and civil society to promote sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender-based violence prevention and response, and mental health and psychosocial support. The majority of our partners are national and local NGOs, including women’s organizations.

In the 2020 humanitarian response plan for the DRC, UNFPA is appealing for US$65 million to strengthen protection and provide life-saving services to three million people, including 700,000 women of childbearing age. This will support the provision of life-saving reproductive health equipment, drugs, contraceptives and supplies.

With this support, women will enjoy safe birth, couples and individuals will have access to free family planning enabling them to make choices, GBV prevention will be strengthened, and GBV survivors will have access to free life-saving psychosocial and medical services.

In addition, youth friendly services, including recreational spaces and peer education for boys and girls, will benefit young people.

By investing in women and young people, prospects for peace and stability will increase in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Now is the time to act.

The post Women & Girls Up Front — the Humanitarian Response in Democratic Republic of Congo appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Julitta Onabanjo is Regional Director, UNFPA East and Southern Africa based in Johannesburg; Shoko Arakaki is Director, UNFPA Humanitarian Office, Geneva; & Sennen Hounton is UNFPA Representative in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

The post Women & Girls Up Front — the Humanitarian Response in Democratic Republic of Congo appeared first on Inter Press Service.

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