Uganda: 10 Million People Will Be Searching For Jobs By 2020, Say Report

By Staff Writer

A report by World Bank shows the number of Ugandans in search for employment is set to sky rocket up to 10 million by 2020, putting more pressure on job creation and attempts at achieving economic equality.

In a report published last year and titled Jobs: Key to Prosperity, painted a grim assessment of Uganda’s strides in creating jobs for a major segment of an educated, young and urban population.

“Uganda is facing an increasing challenge to productively employ its fast growing and mainly young, literate and increasingly urban population,” it stated.

The report is corroborated by a 2013 study by the Labour and Education ministries that discovered that out of the nearly 400,000 graduates produced by training institutions annually, less than 100,000 land jobs.

Uganda’s population currently is estimated to be 34 million, will have grown to about 42 million by 2020.

Paul Lukema, a research analyst with the Economic Policy Research Centre, says the short term solution in plugging the job deficit lies in promoting agriculture but with the government looking forward to embracing industrialization in the long run.

“Uganda should create at least 400,000 jobs annually which is 2 million jobs every five years. Though agriculture employs more than 65 per cent of our population, there has been a trend where youth shift from rural areas to urban areas which are a shift from agriculture to [the] service [sector],”asserts Lukema. “The solution would be industrialisation because it adds value to agriculture and produces formal, high-wage jobs.”

However, the World Bank report further projected that ongoing reforms to Uganda’s education sector will mean that by 2020, about 50% of Uganda’s total labour force will have attained at least a minimum of primary education.

Uganda is not the only African country being faced with uncertainty for its people’s future, as majority of governments on the continent are grappling with unemployment issues which have lead to increased crime, terrorist and poaching activities, forcing leaders to rethink their strategies and priorities to save the situation from worsening.