The Government has been urged to review youth employment programs to ensure their effectiveness and relevance as part of policies to boost youth employment in Ghana.

The World Bank underscored in a report that while a major focus is now on entrepreneurship, not all young people would have the capacity and capability to be entrepreneurs, even with support within the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

“As such a review of all major youth employment programs, focusing on analyzing their capabilities, content, reach and effectiveness would be useful to having a more comprehensive approach to providing transitional support and sustainable decent livelihoods to youth.”
World Bank

As part of both labor supply and demand side policies identified to help address the country’s unemployment problem, the World Bank noted that the government would have to broaden the scope of possible youth employment programs beyond entrepreneurship.

The Bretton Woods Institution explained that there are several job opportunities that are not tapped into in Ghana because they are viewed as menial jobs. To this end, it suggested that there should be some thinking and further research on how to change the mindsets of the youth on jobs desirability as well as finding ways to support wages of workers doing these ‘hard’ jobs.

The World Bank also called for the need to leverage technology. To promote technological adoption, it noted that skills need to be acquired swiftly and updated regularly.

“Policy makers will need to adapt to the ‘new normal’, precipitated by COVID19, and ensure technological changes are effectively incorporated into both the education and work environment. Further, a review of the entire technology value chain could help identify opportunities (both in the short term and longer term) and markets for young innovators to scale up their businesses.”
World Bank

Demand-side policies

The demand-side policies outlined to boost growth and increase employment were mostly at the macro level which are aimed to transform the economy.

To enable economic transformation, the World Bank underscored that macroeconomic and fiscal governance should strive to stabilize the economy and boost revenue collection for investment.

In other to stabilize the economy and ensure its sustainability, the World Bank called on authorities to revisit and strengthen the current fiscal responsibility framework.

“Secondly, to collect more revenue that can be channeled to critical investments, Ghana would need to improve the efficiency and equity of its tax mix. Thirdly, to specifically address the threats posed by climate change, Ghana could review, rationalize and possibly augment its environmental taxation toolkit.”
World Bank

Furthermore, the World Bank noted that financial intermediation must improve to allow Ghanaian enterprises (mainly SMEs) to grow, enhance their productivity, and contribute to economic transformation. This, it noted, requires accelerating key interventions to remove obstacles associated with limited access to finance, such as reforms to increase the availability of long-term finance and to mitigate financial institutions’ credit risk and lessen collateral requirements.

Based on the World Bank’s assessments, expanding job opportunities will also require identifying and increasing market access and boosting competitiveness in manufacturing, notably by leveraging the opportunities offered by the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

The Institution explained that leveraging the AfCFTA and identifying accessible markets for young entrepreneurs within the continent, by aggregating national markets to create larger ones, as well as taking identifying comparative advantage, hold the potential to promote quality and productive job creation, and to increase employment within young businesses.

Calling for the need to support High-yielding job-creating sectors, the World Bank noted that policy makers could conduct in-depth analyses of high-potential job growth areas, identifying areas where different categories of youth would most likely be interested in and/or find jobs. Promising opportunities exist in agriculture and agribusiness, tourism, manufacturing, and construction, it added.