High Youth Unemployment Demands Mahama Prioritize Rural Development Now

In Sub-Saharan Africa, between 10 and 12 million young people enter the workforce, while only about 3 million new jobs are created. This suggests that Ghana is among the African nations facing a severe problem with youth unemployment. Although other factors contribute to Ghana's young unemployment problem, it is easy to identify the primary cause as the nation's persistent neglect of rural development.

In developing countries, more industries, factories, agriculture, and dairy farms are concentrated in rural areas to prevent the mass movement of people, including the youth seeking employment in metropolitan areas. This is the reason why, even though Europeans and Americans call certain places villages, they don’t seem to be villages. However, in Africa, everything is different; a village is a village because it lacks everything.

Ghana's rural areas commonly lack basic amenities like paved roads and dependable transportation infrastructure, which makes it difficult to access supplies and services. Poor access to clean water and power affects health, sanitation, and agricultural output in many rural communities. Health issues are made worse by a lack of skilled healthcare professionals and restricted access to medical facilities and diagnostic services.

With few schools and restricted access to high-quality education, particularly in rural areas, educational infrastructure is sometimes insufficient. Access to digital information and online services is often limited by the unavailability or unreliability of high-speed broadband and internet connectivity. Furthermore, fundamental social amenities like libraries, recreational centers, and cultural organizations are frequently absent from rural locations, which exacerbates social isolation and limits chances for personal growth.

The main reasons why young people move from rural to urban areas are better employment opportunities and easier access to higher education, which are sometimes scarce in rural communities. Particularly in businesses and professional sectors that are concentrated in metropolitan regions, cities provide a more active employment market with higher-paying positions and more prospects for career advancement. This is one of the causes of the youth unemployment crisis in Ghana's major cities.

These financial incentives are important motivators, especially for those who want to leave the low salaries and few opportunities for living that are common in rural areas. The prospect of a contemporary lifestyle, more social interaction, and the potential to interact with people from various backgrounds and cultures, often viewed as an opportunity to expand their social horizons, also draws a lot of young people.

The persistence of youth unemployment in a country, regardless of its overall wealth, is closely tied to the lack of development in rural areas due to systemic economic and structural constraints. When economic opportunities in rural regions are limited, policies and programs aimed at helping rural youth are generally ineffective, as they fail to operate within the broader context of constrained local opportunity structures.

Even in agriculturally rich areas, where nearly two-thirds of rural youth live, low agricultural productivity and poor access to markets for inputs and outputs hinder their ability to earn a sustainable livelihood. This lack of economic transformation in rural areas blocks the transition of young people from agriculture into higher productivity. As we are now aware of the causes, what can the Mahama administration do to solve the problem?

"Ghana Youth: Life After School Is Hell!" was a program that Simon Bawua and his producer, Thomas Pollux, presented on Ghana Diaspora TV on Sunday, December 21. Together with Richmond Safo, the NPP spokesperson in Antwerp, we talked about the problem and offered recommendations that would aid the Mahama government in resolving the matter.

I have written many articles and advised President John Mahama on several occasions to consider investing in some of the abandoned factories in the rural areas of the great leader, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, since obtaining full cash to launch a new factory is very challenging, and more significantly, it may take longer than five years. More importantly, if the rural areas are developed, sending teachers and nurses to the health and educational sectors wouldn't be a problem.