The Economic Community of West African States on Thursday in Addis Ababa, tasked member states on effective measures to address the alarming rate of youths unemployment in the West Africa region.
Addressing the Ministerial meeting of the 9th ordinary session of AU Commission’s Labour and Social Affairs, ECOWAS Commissioner for Human Development and Gender, Dr Adrienne Diop said over 33 per cent of the population in the ECOWAS region were youths and that 70 per cent of them were unemployed.
Diop lamented that although the Community recorded an average of 5.6 GDP growth, youth unemployment remained a serious challenge to the region.
“We cannot sit on the fence and allow this productive age group to waste away as they constitute a serious social problem to the community.
“Our member states are actively involved in drawing up of measures to address the challenge, but we need to do more at the regional level especially with the adoption of the ECOWAS Action Plan in 2012.”
She said the situation was compounded by the conflicts in Mali, Guinea Bissau and other parts of the region.
“As the challenges continue to flow in torrents, we need to equip ourselves with innovative ideas and stronger commitment to take them one after the other.”
Diop, however, said that ECOWAS had expanded its scope of operation by putting in place policy measures, tools, and developed functional and dynamic programmes to address these challenges to make positive impact on the populace.
“On the labour sector there has been some imitative with the adoption of labour and employment policy and strategic plan of action which are now being implemented.”
She appealed to the member states to effectively promote social dialogue and tri-partism cooperation as efficient “means of mainstreaming social harmony at national and regional levels to provide a forum for dialogue and consultation among stakeholders in the labour and employment market.”
Earlier, AU Commissioner in charge of Labour and Social Affairs, Dr Mustapha Sidiki called for inclusive pro-job growth combined with employment and social protection schemes among AU member states.
Sidiki said, “Africa is still the least productive region in the World, lagging far behind other regions.
“According to the 2012 AUC-ECA MDGs report, this situation will worsen unless vigorous measures are taken to address it.