Unemployment And Restiveness:Problems In Africa

Africa which is the second largest continent in the world, a province of the Roman Empire containing what is now modern Tunisia and portions of Libya. The continent that is south of Europe, east of the Atlantic Ocean, west of the Indian Ocean and north of Antarctica. Is face with several  problems, one of which is "youth unemployment". Cities in Africa are developing at an astronomical rate but infrastructures which are necessary to cope with those fast development are not-existent.

Humans procreate at a very high rate but most families can barely feed their children, send them to school or train them to acquire new skills or certain trades that can make them stand on their own in the future.

Many young people who have acquired some level of higher education are roaming the streets without jobs. They are all over the streets of major cities like Lagos, Casablanca, Durban, Nairobi, Dakar and Cape Town. As the saying goes, "an idle hand is the devil's workshop"; many of these unemployed youths engaged in many activities to make ends meet. Some of these activities are dishonest and criminal, including advance fee fraud popularly called '419', 'yahoo-yahoo' (an act of duping innocent people of their  hard-earned money through the internet, touting, political thuggery, kidnapping, militancy among others. Their unemployed state is exploited by criminals to lure them into crimes.

These young people are able-bodied men and women who cannot find honest jobs to do. The white-collar jobs are few and unavoidable at an inflationary state. There is frustration.  There is hunger. There is anger. The frustration is heightened when families lose their youths to men of the underworld.

Restiveness and rebellious has become the order of the day. The large number of the unemployed makes it difficult for controllable support. They become easily available for political hawks. These political hawks, through selfish interest destroy the youths by manipulating them to riot, strike and kidnapping until a point of wastage.

Also, the youths are informally united into unholy groups and cults for their interest. The common factors of this unity is their dissatisfaction and disillusionment with government policies and activities that do not seem to favour them. Their singular reaction is anger which shows in how they engage the society by their actions. They become a thorn in the flesh of the society and the government. During riots and strikes they are the first to be seen beating and maiming innocent people.

Government needs to provide jobs. Youths need to be gainfully engaged so that they can contribute meaningfully to nation's development.