Rural youth need jobs intervention
In his budget speech this week, finance minister Tito Mboweni heralded some strides as far as the urgent challenge of youth unemployment is concerned.
Much of the success has been attributed to the Presidential Youth Employment Intervention announced by Cyril Ramaphosa.
The figures are indeed impressive and lofty considering the time in which all this has happened.
A total of 175,000 permanent jobs — including 21,000 internship opportunities — were created.
Of the 59,900 short term jobs available in the labour market, the bulk of these reported accolades — 65% in total — were given to youths.
At a perfunctory level there is much to celebrate — these are big numbers — yet amid all these recorded accomplishments are present-day challenges perpetuated by our glaring history of inequality.
Mboweni comforts us though —“we intend to make this intervention a resounding success.”
But missing in action and often drowned in the recorded sea of success are the voices of young people living in rural communities.
Unfortunately, the experience of feats such as the Jobs Fund, commendable as they are, will go unnoticed.
The scale and challenge of youth unemployment is just enormous.
Marginalised rural communities do not offer the aura and attraction that characterise urban settings.
As we speak of agenda 4.0 and the fourth industrial revolution, how much of all this benefits the young person living in Lusikisiki?
The efforts including the financial commitments expressed by the finance minister require a dual process of celebration and a call to action, the latter requiring us to be frank and critique issues around the concentration of perceived opportunities in addressing youth unemployment.
Adding to this challenge could be the perception among young people around what it means to live in a rural community.
For instance, our research shows young people from rural communities cannot wait for the slightest opportunity to follow the glamour associated with urban communities, so efforts to develop rural communities fail given the departure of their most economically active residents.
Some of these young people often abandon already existing economic opportunities that may be unique to their rural locale.
A challenge could also be in how we script stories of success, especially from the framing of young people.
Success stories of wealth creation often feature a protagonist who abandons the squalor of the rural setting and makes it big in the city.
The protagonist then embarks on a seasonal return to their rural area with the pressure to show artefacts of success, creating shame for those who may have stayed when others left for the city.
A need may exist to rewrite the narrative in support of efforts on the ground especially in our rural communities.
Needed in the rescripting of this story is for us to also tell and celebrate the stories of young people making it big in areas such as agriculture, livestock, alternative energy and forestry.
The hallmark of such celebration is not just the tenacity and desire to create economic opportunities, but the state of being and staying in the rural community en route to creating wealth.
Our reporting of success also needs to be geographically sensitive as to where opportunities exist or should exist.
This adds to the need for our leaders to be deliberate and intentional in their engagement as to the socio-economic opportunities that exist across this country.
This calls for us not only to go down to the channels through which young people find expression, but also the areas they live in.
It is an effort that requires going into rural communities like Mdeni or Msinga, and even Dullstroom, to sell opportunities to young people on the ground.
In our efforts to address youth unemployment we need to make rural communities not only economically potent but also cool to our young people.
● Prof Willie Tafadzwa Chinyamurindi is an associate professor at the University of Fort Hare and writes in his own personal capacity.