Editorial: Solving the high youth unemployment conundrum

According to a World Bank Report issued in 2020, Ghana is faced with 12% youth unemployment and more than 50% underemployment. Both, the report continued, are higher than overall unemployment rates in Sub-Saharan African countries. This is a very serious issue that should attract the attention of every Ghanaian.

Though various governments under the Fourth Republican Constitution have done their best to address the issue of unemployment, particularly that of the youth, it has not helped in ameliorating the situation, because they are all short term policies that do not guarantee permanent jobs.

Unfortunately, there is nothing any government can do because there are over 700,000 workers on her payroll who are consuming over 70% of our domestic revenue in terms of salaries and emoluments. In a nutshell, there is no fiscal space for the government to keep on employing more people to help bridge the unemployment gap. The burden, therefore, falls on the private sector to help shore-up the employment numbers.

Though the private sector accepted the challenge and has no doubt contributed enormously to addressing the unemployment situation, the free market economy pursued by successive governments, where we allow the laws of demand and supply to determine our economic paradigm, without government intervention, is not helping.

A number of foreign investors have come to invest in our economy after we declared ourselves as a Lower Middle Income country. Unfortunately, some of these investments are extensions of some sister countries’ economy in Ghana.

Typical examples are the numerous shopping malls that have sprung up in the country. These malls stock on their shelves over 70% of goods brought from their country of origin and thereby relegating locally produced goods to the background.

Okra, tomatoes, onions, cabbages and some canned foods are produced in this country. But what do we see? These foreign owned malls deliberately stock the shelves with products from their countries. The big question is, how can we fend off ourselves against unemployment if goods we produce in our motherland are not consumed?

Regrettably, the Public Relations Officer of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, Prince Boakye, is saying that supermarkets could not be compelled to sell made in Ghana goods but rather encouraged to do so, even as the Ministry and other stakeholders were helping to improve the quality of local goods in order to appeal to supermarkets.

“Through the One District One Factory project, we are ensuring that every product that comes out of the program has been duly certified by the Ghana Standards Authority, just to ensure that they are fit for purpose, in terms of quality and standards. For this reason, some of the supermarkets will be assured that these are quality products that they can stock in their supermarkets.

“Most of these supermarkets are privately owned. For which reason, nobody, through whatever law can compel a private entity to stock made in Ghana products. What we can do is to engage them and get them to appreciate the quality of the local goods,” Mr Boakye was quoted by various media platforms as saying.

Much as this statement from a public official sounds distasteful, The Chronicle cannot wholly blame him because as we have already alluded to, we, as a country, have decided to pursue free market economy which has given birth to the dislike of our local products by these so-called foreign investors.

But in the midst of this policy that has entangled us, in our view, something still ought to be done about the stocking of foreign products by these shopping malls. Some of our University graduates have come out with innovative products, which need to be pushed to market them, so they can expand and employ people.

With these shopping malls becoming the centre of attraction for the affluent in our society, who also have the purchasing power, one can imagine how these products produced by hard working Ghanaians will grow if they are well stocked by the shopping malls.

The Chronicle can hazard that the number of Ghanaians employed by the malls, plus the total taxes they pay to the government when aggregated, come nowhere near the benefits the producers in their country of origin are getting for selling their products in Ghana.

This is the reason why we must review our free market economic policy and implement flexible ones that will inure to the benefit of our economy. The high youth unemployment rate is certainly not the type of Gordian Knot that cannot be resolved by Ghanaians. We can do so if we adopt the right policies and programmes.

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