BUJUMBURA June 24th (ABP) – “Jobless youth is a double-edged sword which can constitute a permanent danger to stability and social peace if not well managed”, declared the Prime Minister of the Republic from Burundi, Mr. Alain Guillaume Bunyoni.
He was speaking on Wednesday, June 22, 2021, in Bujumbura, as he opened a workshop to validate the National Action Plan for Youth Employment in Burundi.
Mr. Bunyoni believes, however, that youth is an essential lever of economic growth that must be activated for the benefit of sustainable development.
This is why among the priority axes of responsible and hard-working government is that which gives a remarkable place to young people, he stressed.
It is in that logic that appropriate measures have been taken to ensure an environment conducive to the employability and inclusion of young people, the Prime Minister said. These are measures that encourage young people and women to start up and create their own jobs instead of always waiting for jobs in the now saturated public service. He mentioned the Youth Investment Bank (BIJE), the Women’s Investment Bank and the Impulse and Guarantee Fund (FIGA) which will undoubtedly support investment projects.
Mr. Bunyoni acknowledges that despite those various efforts already made by the government, given the cross-cutting nature of the issue of employment in general and that of youth employment in particular, the government alone cannot resolve this issue. A synergy of other actors is needed. Thus, despite the various initiatives already undertaken to tackle the problem of unemployment and youth poverty, much remains to be done, in particular bringing together all those actors and pooling financial resources to draw up a common large-scale program that can help create mass jobs to insert as many young people as possible in search for jobs, he noted. He thus indicates that this message goes to other partner actors of the government, in particular those of the private sector and the technical and financial partners who intervene in the development support of the country. This will make it easier to participate in the implementation of actions contained in the Youth Employment Action Plan (PANEJ), he continued to say.
According to the Prime Minister, the latter therefore comes at the right time, given that it took inception in an environment and context favorable to directing and propelling the actors in the field of promotion and job creation who, henceforth, operated solo, without any strategic reference document.