Post date: Mar 27, 2012 4:31:47 PM
LUSAKA, ZAMBIA (REUTERS) - Moses Banda is a budding entrepreneur with several small businesses in Zambia's capital Lusaka. Straight out of high school and with no formal business or vocational training, he dived straight into self employment, expecting he would not be hired at his age and with no experience.
Just six months after President Michael Sata won elections last year, Zambians say they want quick delivery on economic promises to the young and unemployed voters who propelled him to power.
Now he is able to look after his two siblings and is looking forward to expanding his small chain of barbershops, which bring in 300 US dollars a month, as well as a metal work shop in which he is partner, now that a new government is in power.
"I have two barbershops and other businesses that help me provide for my family and put food on the table. Business is going well. I hope that it will get better now that we have a new government, which promised a lot of transformation concerning youth employment and more accessibility to capital. I think obtaining capital to expand my business will get a lot easier now, unlike under the previous regime," said Banda.
Zambia's President Michael Sata swept to power on the back of voters looking for change in a country that has seen its economy grow but who felt the riches from its vast copper mines had not made their way to the people or created enough jobs.
His first order of business was to reassure foreign mining firms their investments would be safe but warned they needed to improve conditions for their Zambian workforce.
But according to a Labour Force Survey in 2008, formal employment was only at 10 percent of the working population while most Zambians who were considered employed had insecure incomes or worked with no wages for their families. Some statistics put the unemployment rate at over 80 percent.
Yufuf Dodia, chairperson of Private Sector Development Association in Zambia, says part of the problem is the education system, with the number of graduates from secondary school growing and not enough training opportunities to equip them for the job market.
"Our youth are coming out of schools with numbers of between 200 and 300,000 thousand every year, pouring onto the streets of our cities looking for jobs. So with an investment in skills development, what we hope to see in the near future is that the youth have attained skills before they leave school or soon after they leave school and its the skills which will give opportunities to our youth, its the skills which will entice them to have better jobs and its the skills that will allow them to go into private businesses to be able to fend for themselves," he said.
About 68 percent of Zambia's population of 13.2 million is made up of young people, making youth unemployment a serious social problem facing past and present administrations.
One way the government is trying create employment is to develop entrepreneurship with 11 billion kwacha (2 million US dollars) of the budget set to fund youth business projects this year.
But another factor analysts say is affecting the job market is rural-urban migration. People expecting high paying jobs in towns leave behind sectors like agriculture, which brings in 20 percent of the GDP. Last year the government announced plans to develop rural based industrial enterprises to encourage a reverse.
Musola Kayunda, is a street shoe vendor with agricultural development training.
"I still do not see the extra money the new government promised. Jobs are still hard to find yet I have taken a skills development course in agriculture, but even though they (government) provides us with tools, how can we farm here in the city? There is no land, they did not give me a piece of land in the regime of Rupiah Banda, or Levy Mwanawasa," said Kayunda.
Sata's government says it plans to make what is a tough business environment more attractive for young people who often face difficulty in accessing capital and high interest rates and have to compete with foreign businessmen with more money and incentives aimed at attracting investment.
"Right now for the small, the micro, small and medium scale enterprises, while the government has a policy in place, we don't have a law governing that and most of the citizens would fall in the category of micro, small and medium sized enterprises for the businesses, but in here they are competing sometimes with foreign investment and the foreign investment obviously have got an advantage because they have got access to what I refer to as incentives where as the local businesses do not have," said Commerce Minister Robert Sichinga.
Sichinga also said the government would reduce the number of licenses a Zambian company needed and streamline the registration process in an effort to reduce the costs of doing business.
Banda is hands on at all his ventures, welding joints at the metal work business he jointly owns with a friend. He may be a testament of the options entrepreneurship could give to thousands of youth struggling to enter Zambia's workforce.