The Centre for Democratic Development-Ghana(CDD-Ghana) has observed that the nation needs to develop its human resources in order to achieve the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda.
It cautioned that the realisation of the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda will remain a mirage “if attention is not placed on enhancing the human resource capacity, especially creating jobs for the youth.”
At a CDD-Ghana breakfast meeting on youth unemployment, Professor Kwasi Prempeh, the Executive Director of CDD-Ghana noted that youth unemployment must be looked at more keenly since the agenda could not be achieved and sustained “if attention is not paid to job creation and conscious investment in country’s human resource base.
Organized on the theme: ‘Creating Jobs & Entrepreneurs for a Self-reliant Ghana’, the event triggered deeper conversation on how government and other stakeholders can harness potential of the youth, while taking critical look at various ongoing youth entrepreneurship initiatives to solve unemployment challenges.
According to Prof Prempeh, “skills building and job creation must be encouraged, innovations, entrepreneurial ideas must be supported and assisted since it is critical for the youth to have stake in economy due to dangers associated with inability to have access to employment opportunities cannot be ignored.”
Dr. Kristen Lord, the Chief Executive Officer of IREX, indicated that although there was no silver bullet solution to youth employment, Ghana, like many African countries, already had structures to help manage the challenge effectively and efficiently.
“The good news is most of ingredients of success are already available, not about creating whole new huge strategy, it’s about better using ingredients are already originally available,” and encouraged managers of educational system to introduce critical thinking, development of soft skills into educational curriculum to help shape the minds and abilities of students.
Stephanie Sullivan, the US Ambassador to Ghana, reiterated that no country could thrive unless the youth made priority, given tools, support and assisted to create their future.
The Afrobarometer’s survey findings show unemployment most important challenge the citizenry want government to address among United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, (SDG) 8, focused on promoting sustained, inclusive, sustainable economic growth, full, productive employment and decent work for all is highest priority.
-3news.com
