Ethiopia

Selam Ayele Kebede ,

Please provide us with your views on the state of youth (un)employment in your country, and how it affects your country's state of peace?

Ethiopia, a country of 100Million+ has 41% of its population between the age of 15 to 29 and is currently dealing with a staggering 27% of youth unemployment. Considering this number will continue to grow, a quick and systematic intervention will need to be put in place by government, private sector and non-profit organizations.

In the past few years only, we have already seen the implications of increasing youth unemployment in Ethiopia. In fact, although we can say that there were several factors that fuelled the various political protests in the country, the high number of unemployed youth have had a major role in initiating, organizing and contributing to the increased instabilities and disturbances of peace. As the youth are the most eager, passionate, adventurous, curious and active part of any given society; proper, cautious and creative management of this group would need absolutely necessary in order to ensure the first things that get challenged otherwise, peace and stability.

How does your work and/or activism promote youth employment and/or sustainable peace?

As we all know, role of private sector and entrepreneurship in creating more jobs and sustaining the economy is unprecedented. Especially in a fragile country like Ethiopia, we will need to put as much effort as possible to support this sector to ensure sustainable growth, innovation and increased peace and stability.

I have been working in the tech/entrepreneurship space for the past 4 years in Africa and mainly in Ethiopia. I believe the work that I do in:

  • Supporting entrepreneurs to understand their business better in order to increase their chances of securing investment,
  • Creating networks of likeminded individuals so that there could be easy flow of information and collaboration, and
  • Working with partners in order to support the government amend policies that will make doing business in Ethiopia easier,
  • promotes youth employment by supporting  job creation, fostering economic growth and in effect bring more peace and stability to the country.