Surmounting Youth Employment Challenges

Ensuring decent jobs for all citizens, especially youth who, in most cases, constitute the bulk of the population, is almost always a perpetual teething problem most governments grapple with. Cameroon is not left out as public authorities work tooth and nail to make job conditions favourable for her youth who relentlessly scramble for scarce jobs in the competitive world.

In the face of the huge challenge, the Head of State, Paul Biya, has been steadfast in instructing government on the steps to take to create job openings for the youth but as well boosting the morale of his young compatriots so that they don’t hope against hope in the tribulations that come with either not finding what to do or working below training capacity.

His traditional Youth Day Message on February 10, 2019 on the eve of the 53rd National Youth Day was another moment for Mr Biya to sound the alarm bell, telling youth that he has not been insensitive to their difficulties and aspirations. “During my swearing-in ceremony, I once more made the commitment to facilitate the social integration of youth,” he said. President Paul Biya reminded his young compatriots that besides recruitments into the defence and security forces, other actors have not relented in implementing projects and programmes in sectors susceptible to ensuring a better insertion of youth into active society.

He singled out the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Civic Education notably with its civic education and national integration campaign which involved more than one million youth and has resulted in the training of 1,300 conscripts by the National Civic Service Agency for Participation in Development. Worthy of note also is the promotion of volunteerism which has helped to train thousands of volunteers for education and health development support operations in priority areas, guidance to youth organisations; youth socio-economic integration by training thousands of them, some of whom are entrepreneurs, the least of which is not the Three-year “Special Youth” Plan involving more than 600,000 people. “Thus, nearly 4,000 projects have been developed in the agricultural, industrial, digital economy and innovation sectors, and adequate financing also provided,” the Head of State disclosed.

That President Paul Biya went into details, giving statistics in most cases is telling of the place of youth employment in his plan to journey Cameroon into a middle-income economy. Understandably so as an employed person in any society is an asset not only to his/her family and generations to come but equally a useful tool for national development. The reverse can be catastrophic cognizant of the fact that an idle mind, as they say, is a devil’s workshop. The efforts put in place by government are visibly resounding.

In fact, President Paul Biya qualified the actions as “remarkable” but not good enough to meet ...