More youth employment programmes, less youth in work: A relook of youth employment initiatives in Ghana

Abstract

It is argued that unemployment, especially youth unemployment, is a threat to national security because unemployed young people are vulnerable to social vices since they are lusty and left to idle would be lured into many social vices, which are inimical to the progress of society. It is therefore essential to keep young people busy by engaging them in productive works. But the irony of Ghana’s situation is that while the number of youth employment programmes is increasing, there is still a rising number of employed youth. In this paper, we present a strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat (SWOT) analysis of four selected public youth employment initiatives implemented in Ghana between 2000 and 2019. This study aims at identifying and understanding gaps in youth employment and workforce development initiatives in the country as a way of proposing how policies should be targeted to address current challenges and also plan for the future. It relied on information from extant literature, project documents, key informant interviews and stakeholder validation workshops. The SWOT analysis was employed to examine the state of the initiatives, challenges and opportunities for improvement in order to provide sustainable youth employment opportunities for the large numbers of young people without work. The findings suggest that these initiatives are generally youth oriented and have the potential to create employment opportunities for youth. However, it was observed that factors including aid sustainability, scalability and innovativeness were not adequately considered in designing the initiatives. Adequate or regular funding, post-project training and skills needs information that should adequately be considered in the design of initiatives in order to obtain maximum benefits from the initiatives.