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Putting ideas to work future: youth design their own futures

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[ibimage==30641==image_content_medium==none==self==ibimage_right==Agatha Akankunda presents employment ideas at the Social Design-a-Thon in Kampala, Uganda.]Youth unemployment is one of the biggest social injustices of our time. It affects young people from all walks of life – informal street sellers on the streets of Lagos to recent graduates in Europe.

Youth unemployment is an everyday drudging reality for 73 million plus young men and women worldwide (International Labour Organisation, 2013). It has an impact on health, education, family, resilience, and quality of life. It is a man-made disaster, which has ramifications not just for the young men and women directly affected, but also their families who they support, and in the long term - their community and national development.

Economists define this as a prolonged period where the economy (macro economy) as a whole improves, but the unemployment rate remains high or continues to increase. There is no mythical neo-liberal trickle down. This is particularly evident in sub Saharan Africa (SSA), where “in 2013, survey data from the Afrobarometer collected across 34 African countries stated that there was little change in poverty at the grassroots after a decade of growth. Furthermore, the ILO data show that SSA has the highest rate of vulnerable employment in the world (77.4 percent in 2013). Vulnerable employment is defined as unpaid family workers and own-account workers as a percentage of total employment.”

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