The Chief Executive Officer of Dansyn Innovation Social Organisation, Daniel Yennube Nang, has attributed the rising youth unemployment situation in the Upper East Region and the entire country Ghana to skills gaps.
Mr. Daniel Nang who was speaking on Saturday December 7, 2020 at a Bolgatanga Jobs fair said unemployment is rising because of job immobility.
The International Labour Organization estimates that almost 65 million youth aged 15-24 years were unemployed in 2017. Youth unemployment rates remain higher than unemployment rates within any other age group, and are over 300% higher than the unemployment rates for adults (persons over 25years).
Speaking at the Jobs fair which was under the theme ‘Creating sustainable employment through digital skills’, the young CEO said the skills gab in the area of digital skills is widening with very few women with skills in Information Communication Technology, (ICT)
“Some areas are very vacant but because of the gabs in the skills and one other area that I think skills gab exist is digital skills. Recently, we’ve been looking for a female to employ, somebody with Bsc in computer science and it has been very difficult. I don’t know whether there is a lady here with Bsc in computer science. Do we have somebody here?” he questioned while looking into a crowd of over fifty participants with no positive response.
He continued “But if I ask about certain other areas of academia, I know people will say I have degree in accounting, all others. I know we can find a lot here but skill gab in digital skills continues to increase. Ladies especially do not want to go there,” he explained.
Gabriel Quarshie, a Base Innovations Leader of Ghana Tech Lab, partners for the Organization of the Job Fair said the fair is to help young people leverage on technology to gain decent employment.
Meanwhile, one of 20 beneficiaries of a web development training organized by Dansyn ISO in partnership with MasterCard Foundation, the World Bank, Ministry of Communications, Ghana and Ghana Tech Lab, Yinbil Mbama Prospera explained that the platform has helped her to become a web developer and is helping her to market her products to the wider community using the internet.
