Youth unemployment remains a pervasive challenge in Ghana, particularly in light of the current economic crisis. As successive governments struggle to look for solutions, one approach has been the creation of special youth programmes and funds. A number of them have been set up since year 2000, some of which are still in operation, with varying degrees of success.<\/p>\n
Examples include the Skills Training and Employment Placement (STEP) Programme (2001), the National Youth Fund (2003), and the now-well-known National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) which was recently rebranded as Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship Development Agency (GYEEDA).<\/p>\n
In commemoration of International Youth Day, 12 August 2014, President John Mahama launched yet another special youth initiative, the Youth Enterprise Support (YES), to \u201cgive young Ghanaians an opportunity to showcase their talents and entrepreneurial skills, and challenge the youth to start new businesses and employ other youth\u201d. According to information provided by its secretariat, the YES initiative will support youth to learn how to start and grow their business and overcome related challenges. This will be combined with dedicated services, resources, training programmes, business clinics, and entrepreneurship monitoring. The big part \u2013 beneficiaries will also access grant financing of up to \u00a250,000 Ghana Cedis.<\/p>\n
Public reaction to the YES initiative has been immediate, with almost equal numbers of sceptics and optimists expressing why they think the new initiative will or will not be successful. I would like to join this discourse by raising some thought-provoking issues that could trigger even deeper thinking on solutions to the challenge of promoting youth employment using the vehicle of the YES initiative.<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>SMART objectives<\/b><\/p>\n
The stated objective of YES to \u201cgive young Ghanaians an opportunity to showcase their talents and entrepreneurial skills, and challenge the youth to start new businesses and employ other youth\u201d is good to the extent that it sets an overall visionary focus for the initiative. Beyond that, however, we need specific objectives to provide the basis on which progress will be assessed in relation to that overall objective. Good practice shows that tracking the performance of any programme is made easier if the objectives are SMART \u2013 Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. In this context, the following questions may be of important consideration: which cohorts of youth are being targeted (in terms of age group, gender, educational background, socio-economic status, regional\/district coverage, career interest, etc)?; how many young people (especially young women) will benefit from the various deliverables provided by the initiative?; how many youth enterprises will actually receive financial assistance?; which sectors of the economy are targeted?; how long will the initiative last?; what is the full financial investment required for that period (of which we know that GH\u00a210 million has already been earmarked)? etc<\/p>\n
2.\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>Designing the initiative<\/b><\/p>\n
YES\u2019 design can be a major determinant of its success or failure. It is therefore worth committing considerable time and resources to the design phase. Some key benchmarks which can be used to evaluate whether the specific design is likely to be effective or not in achieving the desired impact include scale and outreach, stakeholder profile, fund size, and private sector participation. Given the scale of the youth unemployment challenge in Ghana, it is important that the initiative has national outreach and impact rather than target a localised catchment. This should be measured by the number and geographical distribution of beneficiaries to be reached based on a stated strategy to achieve national coverage. In this vein, an initial step in the design process could be to undertake an environmental scan to identify strategic stakeholders and the capacities they bring. In particular, this would be an imperative for leveraging private sector assistance in boosting the size of funds available to the initiative<\/p>\n
3. \u00a0\u00a0<\/b>YES secretariat<\/b><\/p>\n
Success of the YES secretariat as the implementing agency will depend first on the performance of the internal management and mechanisms to deliver the services to young people. This includes good governance in terms of a clear organisational structure and well developed and documented systems. Additional factors are qualified staff, allocation of financial resources in ways that allow for multi-annual planning based on performance, and regular reporting to all key stakeholders. Important consideration must also be given to the institutional location of the secretariat; in other words, what are the performance-based merits and demerits for housing the YES secretariat at the Office of the President as compared to, say, National Youth Authority, National Board for Small-Scale Industries, or others?.<\/p>\n
4.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>Policy coherence & stakeholder participation<\/b><\/p>\n
Let me be quick to add that a well-functioning secretariat with a solid implementing mechanism alone is not a sufficient factor for guaranteeing the success of the YES initiative, nor would that become the panacea for reaching the public policy objective of youth employment. The initiative should be only one instrument within the larger framework of national entrepreneurship development and employment promotion policies. This means that the initiative should operate within a given policy environments and its success to a large extent depends on the performance of those policies.<\/p>\n
When an initiative is detached from broader policy frameworks, it might not achieve its full potential as compared to being part of a holistic solution grounded in policy. Government could take the lead to rope in and coordinate the private sector and other relevant stakeholders, including young people themselves, to design, implement, monitor and evaluate a targeted and integrated initiative. National Action Plans on Youth Employment (spearheaded by the International Labour Organisation) could form the basis for such a holistic approach.<\/p>\n
Policies provide an enabling environment. Government as the main custodian of policies is the one that creates that enabling environment for youth employment and that begets the argument whether with its limited resources it should also be the one designing, implementing and evaluating such programmes. Within a well-developed multi-stakeholder process, government\u2019s role could be to design, coordinate and evaluate, and also to create an enabling environment, while leaving implementation to other stakeholders.<\/p>\n
5.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>Monitoring progress<\/b><\/p>\n
There is need for the development and management of a sound monitoring, evaluation and learning system. This must be done by experts. To make the system work effectively, a database is also required at the level of partners for continued tracking of results. This implies that sufficient funding has to be made available for setting up and maintaining the databases. It may also be possible to mainstream the tracking mechanism into existing national statistics management systems.<\/p>\n
6. \u00a0<\/b>Indicators of success<\/b><\/p>\n
YES\u2019 success will be measured by comparing its achievements with the set objectives. This goes back to the earlier point about setting SMART objectives. The objectives should be linked to specific targets, which should be achieved within a certain timeframe. Targets should be made gender-specific, so that achievements of young women entrepreneurs can be compared with those of young men. Once the objectives and targets are identified and the datasets available, a concrete and specific work plan needs to be developed to guide the process towards the attainment of results.<\/p>\n
In generic terms, if the ultimate goal of the YES initiative is to create employment for youth on a sustainable basis through entrepreneurship, then the bottomline indicator is whether this has happened. In this case, generic indicators may include number of youth enterprises supported, number of jobs created, cost of creating new youth enterprises, rate of transitioning to mainstream business financing, growth in fund size, among others<\/p>\n
7. \u00a0<\/b>Grant financing is not sustainable!<\/b><\/p>\n
There is overwhelming evidence that grant financing is not sustainable and may not actually solve the youth unemployment challenge that the YES initiative is setup to address. Perceptions of government money being \u2018free\u2019 exist, already weakening the obligation of responsible usage of public funds. Where grants are the mechanism, there is a low level of motivation to succeed since the money can be lost and there is no consequence for the beneficiary.<\/p>\n
Government should be aware that the YES initiative may be perceived as a political tool. By working with non-governmental agencies, including United Nations and other international development organisations, it can reduce the level of apathy among citizens and actors with different political persuasions as well as minimise the risk that youth may think that they do not have an obligation to demonstrate results in return for the services they receive.<\/p>\n
To conclude, hopefully, I have succeeded in raising some critical issues for our discourse on the new flagship youth initiative of government. I do not seek to be prescriptive, nor do I think that the issues I raise constitute an exhaustive blueprint for a successful national youth initiative. I can guarantee however that dealing with these issues in a frank and serious manner would lead to a strong YES initiative that stands a better chance of succeeding where its predecessors may have failed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
By:\u00a0Emmanuel Edudzie\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Youth unemployment remains a pervasive challenge in Ghana, particularly in light of the current economic crisis. As successive governments struggle to look for solutions, one approach has been the creation of special youth programmes and funds. A number of them have been set up since year 2000, some of which are still in operation, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":16666,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[8],"yoast_head":"\n