Promoting Livelihood Opportunities. For Rural Youth: Some Lessons from Tanzania. Asha JUMA

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1 IFAD GOVERNING COUNCIL ROUNDTABLE GENERATING REMUNERATIVE LIVELIHOOD OPPORTUNITIES FOR RURAL YOUTH Promoting Livelihood Opportunities For Rural Youth: Some Lessons from Tanzania Asha JUMA February 2007 The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect official views or policies of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), except as explicitly stated.

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3 PROMOTING LIVELIHOODS OPPORTUNITIES FOR RURAL YOUTH: SOME LESSONS FROM TANZANIA 1.0 Introduction Poverty and unemployment are two of the major global challenges facing mankind today, especially in Developing and Least Developed Countries (LDCs). According to the ILO s Global Employment Trend Brief, unemployment has risen over the last decade. It is estimated that the number of unemployed worldwide reaches nearly 192 million people and the underemployment remains pervasive. Furthermore, the estimates indicate that about 35 percent of the world unemployed, are the youth. The causes that are more often associated with the rising rate of unemployment are globalization, development in information and communication technology as well as advanced technology that is capital intensive. The magnitude of unemployment and poverty in Tanzania is a fundamental problem. The economic growth that is currently taking place in the country has not been able to generate adequate employment and income generating opportunities to absorb net increases to the labourforce and reduce the proportion of the labourforce that is unemployed and underemployed. According to the Integrated Labour Force Survey (2000/2001), the population of Mainland Tanzania was 32.8, 17.8 million people constituted the country s total labourforce out of whom 15.5 million (87.1 percent) were employed and 2.3 million (12.9 percent) were unemployed. Of the employed 14.6 million (94 percent) were fully employed while (6 percent) were underemployed. Youth are the most affected group; youth unemployed is 17 percent as compared to 12.9 percent of the general unemployment rate in Tanzania. In Zanzibar, the youth unemployment rate is estimated at 20 percent (HBS 2004/2005). In most developing countries, the youth unemployment rate is high in urban areas than in rural areas. In rural areas most of youth are employed in subsistence agriculture and family based livelihood activities such as handcraft, shops, fishing, seaweed farming and tailoring. Agriculture being the biggest employer of the rural population, its performance is suboptimal due to several factors, which include unfavourable weather conditions, low use of improved agricultural technologies, poor extension and marketing systems etc. This brings the shift of young people from the rural sector to urban informal sector, which is characterized with low income, poor working conditions and hence unemployment rate increase in urban areas. The biggest challenge of rural areas therefore is the high underemployment rather than the high unemployment rates. The factors that seem to contribute to the high underemployment rates are inadequate education achievements for rural youth. The unemployed are mostly better educated than the underemployed and hence are more urban based. Other contributing factors are inadequate infrastructure base (roads, power, water supply etc) and poor communication systems, which are more rural phenomenon. Though there are diverse rural livelihood opportunities in rural areas, most youths find them unattractive and not appealing to be engaged in. 1

4 Many regard farming as a dirty activity due lack of proper facilities. This has resulted to the fact that agriculture is regarded as an employer of the last resort to young people. There is gender disparity with regards to livelihoods opportunities in rural areas of most Africa countries, Tanzania is not an exception. In Tanzania, rural young women are mostly engaged in food crops production, seaweed farming, weaving, and pottery. On the contrary, young men are mostly found engaging in cash crops farming, livestock keeping, fishing, petty trade and working as casual labourers. In terms of workload, women work for longer hours than men and are much at disadvantaged in terms of educational achievement and access to basic services such as credit, information and market. Lack of decent livelihood opportunities results into deprivation of youth with the opportunities for securing independent housing and accommodations necessary for the establishment of families and participation in the life of society. It also create an environment for the thriving of a wide range of social evils of which the young people are particularly more vulnerable to its damaging effects. The consequences of lacking livelihood and employment opportunities for the youth is increasing rates of youth migrating out of rural areas, increasing number of young criminals and prostitutes, and increasing drug abuse and HIV/AIDS infections. 2.0 Recent Development efforts in promoting livelihood opportunities for rural youth in Tanzania Various efforts have been made by the Government of Tanzania and stakeholders to increase employment opportunities and promote livelihoods for rural youth for poverty reduction. These efforts include creating favourable policy and legislative environment for attracting domestic as well as foreign investments to increase employment opportunities. The expanding tourism sector has seen the opening up of tourist hotels in rural coastal areas and remote parts of the countries, mostly areas neighbouring national parks and areas of natural attractions. Promotion of skills training and youth development programmes, which include both government and private sector accessing financial services and information. In additions, the Government has taken initiatives to undertake policy and law reforms with aim of eradicating poverty, particularly in rural areas. The formulation of Tanzania Development Vision 2025 (for Tanzania Mainland), the Zanzibar Development Vision 2020, the National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (MKUKUTA), the Zanzibar Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (MKUZA) and the implementation of labour laws reforms programmes in 2005 are some of the major achievements in this regard. Furthermore the establishment of institutions dealing with issues of youth is another major success. 3.0 Challenges and strategies Despite the recorded achievements in creating conducive environment and increasing employment opportunities Tanzania, like many other developing countries, still faces major challenges in promoting the livelihood opportunities for rural youths. Inappropriate school curricula and poor quality education that 2

5 is largely irrelevant to the needs of the labour market still remain a key challenge for Tanzania, and even for most African countries. Over the recent past, many youths in Africa have increasingly obtained more formal and post-primary education. However, the unfavourable educational systems have largely contributed to the decline in quality of education provided and hence making the youths unable to meet the requirements of labour markets. Young people are motivated to start their own business and create their own employment, because the chance of finding jobs in the current labour market are so limited, however they lack support on sustainability governed by factors such as, availability of investment capital, risk absorption capacity, know how in terms of financial management, enterprises development and market accessibility. The ineffectiveness of enforcing regulations with respect to registering, monitoring and coordination of labour migration poses a serious challenge for Tanzania to provide employment opportunities for its youths. There is also potential threat to achieve the rural livelihood promotion targets due to prevalence of HIV/AIDS, existence of substance abuse and prostitution among youth group. Despite increased investments in rural areas (such as the expansion of tourism sector), the general tendency in many parts of Africa, Tanzania being no exception, has been the fact that the urban youths benefits more from those investments than rural youth, even for the unskilled jobs. There are also weaknesses in the area of targeting for policies and programmes. Most of the existing policies regard rural population as a homogenous group that needs universal interventions. Though there has been some emphasis on directing support to rural areas (IFAD is a good example). Its impact in the livelihood development has been minimal as interventions were not taking holistic approach in addressing rural livelihood problems. Also weak institutional linkages and coordination in programme/projects designing, implementation and monitoring and evaluation contribute highly to the failure of achieving the desired targets of improving rural youth livelihoods. In addition, the bias nature of research against rural youth employment and livelihood opportunities, continue to deprive planners of important information required for planning youth employment issues. In order to address these challenges, the following strategies are recommended: There is a need to provide youth with appropriate post primary education, support change of mindset and develop their skills in order to promote self employment and increase their employability in the expanding private sector investments. Eg. Setting of skill development centres within the rural areas. Collaborative effort is required to educate people and create public awareness on the harmful effects of substance abuse, prostitution and the risk of HIV/AIDS transmissions. Counselling, testing, promotion of dissemination of information on HIV/AIDS and the use of Anti Retro-Virals (ARVs) need to be further advocated. 3

6 More efforts need to be taken in the area of policy and laws reforms in order to provide proper guidance for informed labour market information and youth programmes designing and implementation. Provision of appropriate support to rural youth livelihood activities and the strengthening of access of young men and women to technical and financial services as well as access to market information is vital for expanding rural employment opportunities and improve rural youth livelihoods. There is also a need for the strengthening of institutional linkages and capacity building at all levels in order to address the challenges of youth unemployment in rural areas. In addition, solving the youth unemployment problems require the opening up of export market opportunities for local products, which include increasing investments in processing and manufacturing and relaxation of restrictive conditions in the international trade. 4.0 Conclusion In conclusion, I wish to emphasize that youth unemployment and underemployment, particularly in rural areas are central social and economic problem facing most of African countries. The key challenge therefore lies on how employment opportunities for both urban and rural youth can be increased and livelihood options promoted and developed. Creating job opportunities for the rural youth is however a long and arduous process, requiring the interplay between different institutions and partners, both local and international. Resources and efforts therefore need to be harmonized and goals set have to be achievable and measurable, in order to ensure progress in solving the rampant problem of rural youth unemployment. 4