The World Bank Country Manager Omomunmi Mimi Ladipo has declined to give data pertaining unemployment in Rwanda.
Unemployment or jobs issues is one of the top priority item on the agenda to be discussed in the World Bank spring annual meeting to take place September 23-25 in Washington DC.
Ladipo was addressing the journalists from both public and private media in a press conference that took place at WB country office in Kigali.
“That one I know is an area with a lot of concern, attention and interest. We can’t and we are not yet in a position to give the specific data but this is what the government is looking at very closely-across the whole of Africa for example we know 7-10 million youth are coming up on Job market every year,”Ladipo said today.
“It is very significant proportion about our population and the expectations is that Rwanda is also somehow similarly impacted so I don’t want to go into data now, what we are trying to do in Rwanda is to pre-empt the possibility of it becoming a significant development issue,” Ladipo added.
She however said that the WB has supported social protection sector projects support aimed at making government to be in a position to provide employment and opportunities for youth in rural country side.
According to Ladipo priorities selected to be listed on the meeting’s agenda base on a combination of a lot of things driven by what is happening in the world giving an example of Jobs referring to what has been happening in the Middle East.
In April this year, Rwanda’s Minister of Public Service Anastase Murekezi the government was targeting to reduce unemployment rate to 4 percent from the current 8 percent in seven years through the formation of cooperatives.
According to the Minister, the working age group stood at 5.3 million with 670,000 still in school while public servants account for two percent representing 120,000 jobs.
It emerged that on average, between 100,000 and 140,000 new jobs are created per year out of a target of 200,000 new jobs by the year 2017.
While formal sector share of vacancies is 6.2 percent, the informal sector is said to dominate the employment industry with 93.8 percent.
Experts say unemployment currently stands at over 205 million worldwide which is the highest-ever recorded.
This year’s theme for the WB spring meeting is ‘Jobs, Gender and Climate change’ of which she said these affect different region differently and they don’t carry the amount of emphasis.
The meeting allows number of lectures, talks and seminars aimed at information sharing across countries and number of cooperate events are organized with Africa region specific events.
“There is accountability of one side done on the other side. It is about what we’ve been doing and about what we see as possible changes in policy direction. Basically to pick back what they think we should be doing and what we are not doing, if they think we have been doing things we shouldn’t have done they would tell us and if they think we have been doing more of a certain things they would also tell us,” Ladipo enlightened about the meeting.
On Rwanda’s context, Ladipo said that the meeting will focus mainly on how WB can continue supporting Rwanda to generate electricity to attain her target of 1000 megawatts by 2017, private sector development and how to support Secretary General Dr. Richard Sezibera’s plans at EAC secretariat.
The Rwandan delegation will be led by John Rwangombwa the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning and Rwanda’s Central Bank Governor Claver Gatete.
Leave a Reply