The Graduate Syndrome

It happens to be graduation week for the main university in Uganda.  Jubilation is in the air, joy in every corner, and traffic on every street as drivers hustle to find their way into the great Makerere University.  Celebrations will go on for a whole week only for most of the graduates to later get in touch with the reality that the market does not have as many slots to employ as many graduates as the universities produce.

With our universities continuing to produce thousands of graduates annually, Uganda whose 78% of the population is below the age of thirty continues to suffer high rates of youth unemployment ranging up to 62% according to Action Aid and 83% according to African Development Bank. Ironically, Uganda has the highest level of entrepreneurship in the world scoring as high as 28.1% according to lioness of Africa Magazine.

The competing unemployment rates raise a lot of questions given the high entrepreneurship rates in the country. Many have attributed it to the fact that most of the enterprises that are started are small and medium enterprises that have the capacity of employing only up to a maximum of three individuals and unfortunately not being able to live up to their third birth. These businesses fail due to many reasons some of which is the fact that most are started as a consequence of failure to attain employment and not out of undying passion.

This Implies an urge to encourage young people to develop passion driven careers and businesses in order to enable them live through the years.This failure has also greatly been attributed to the lack of knowledge on business development such as business planning, promotion basics, start up stimulation and many others. This calls for intervention of the government to amend the formal education curriculum or rather support institutions and organizations that are training young people with this knowledge.

Research by the Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA) shows that 63% of the employers in Uganda are dissatisfied with the graduates that are produced by the higher institutions of learning in Uganda because the graduates do not have the necessary hands on employable skills required to fit in their work environments. Furthermore, the research revealed that skills like professional etiquette, professional writing and many others are often ignored while at universities. It is therefore important to train young people in these soft and employable skills that will enable them strive in the market.

Kyusa looks to empower Out of school youth in urban slums and villages with these employable skills, life skills and entrepreneurship skills including business development in a bid to address lack of economic opportunity by reducing the rate of youth unemployment especially among the out of school youth who have for long been forgotten. We turn their mindsets of hopelessness to hope by encouraging them to take on passion driven careers that are able to earn them a living.