Uganda will find itself with a crisis of more workers than jobs unless the country’s economy grows faster than its current pace world bank report says.
According to “Uganda: Jobs strategy for inclusive growth” a new World Bank report released early last week, Uganda has seen more than 300,000 additional workers enter the job market per year between 1992 and 2014. Between 2030 and 2041, the number is set to rise to over one million annually.
The report said that With the country’s growing population, an economic transformation that will create jobs creation requires faster urbanisation with industrialisation, which should start with the developing commercial agriculture.
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The agricultural sector in Uganda accounts for around 80 per cent of the annual export earnings and employs nearly 82 per cent of the workforce.
Three-quarters of young Ugandans entering the labour market work in agriculture where productivity growth is negligible which translates to slow economic transformation.
For the next 21 years, the country’s prevailing economic growth is no longer big enough to create more and better jobs for its population. Between 2000 and 2012, the World Bank report says the country’s GDP increased by nearly an average of seven per cent. However, since 2006, the growth has been slowing down falling below five per cent in 2016, when the bank last collected household data.
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In 2019, the economy, however, reported strong growth estimated at 6.3 per cent, mostly driven by the expansion of services and industrial growth driven by mining and construction. However, the real challenge is in the economic slowdown across main economic sectors and in all former growth drivers.
As per the period covered, the World Bank report notes the deteriorating quality of jobs is characterised by a slow urbanisation process, spatial inequalities and a low demand for wage workers in the private sector.
Wage job opportunities depend on having a dynamic private formal sector that is expanding and therefore hiring workers. Large firms are often in a position to provide more productive.
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