SAD INDEED! How can we work to change this trend?
Please read below:


Unemployment will force more youths to flee Africa
By Nick Tattersall Thu Dec 1, 2:48 PM ET

DAKAR (Reuters) - Dakar's university may provide an education envied around
West Africa but many of its students have only one dream -- to leave Africa,
even if it means hiding in boats, truck containers or the undercarriage of
an aircraft.

Almost three quarters of West Africa's population are under 30 and
unemployment rates in some countries are as high as 80 percent. In the
overcrowded corridors of Senegal's top university, students say that leaves
them with only one option.

"Here all the students dream of leaving. We don't know what there is over
there, in Europe or the United States, but there are no jobs here," said
Matar Fall, 22, on his way across the sandy campus to a geography lecture.
The United Nations said on Thursday youth joblessness in the region, which
has seen some of modern Africa's most brutal wars, was a threat to the
stability of even those countries that have so far escaped all-out conflict.
Events last month in Morocco, where troops deployed to stop hundreds of
African youths storming Spanish enclaves, would "pale into insignificance
compared to what we could witness in 20 years time," the U.N. Office for
West Africa said in a study.

"It's a tragedy that many of the region's young people seem to have, almost
as their highest aspiration, the idea of stowing away inside an aircraft's
undercarriage or a truck container in order to take themselves away from
Africa," said Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. special envoy for the region.

"Current levels of unemployment among young men and women in West Africa are
a ticking time bomb for the region and also beyond ... it risks destroying
the political and social structures even of countries that are at present
stable."

GUNS FOR HIRE

Current demographic trends in West Africa are among the highest in recorded
history anywhere in the world, with an estimated 430 million people expected
to live in the region by 2020, an increase of over 100 million in just 15
years.

Millions already live in overcrowded shanty-towns and slums with the numbers
of unemployed young men rising year by year, fuelling crime and providing
the least stable countries with cheap recruits for militia groups and rebel
factions.

"Cross-border recruitment of young people for armed conflict is all too
common in the arc of territory extending from Guinea-Bissau to Ivory Coast,"
the study said.

Ould-Abdallah said Ivory Coast, split into a government south and rebel
north since 2002, was a major concern with former combatants from
neighboring Liberia, many of whom fought as child soldiers, being recruited
to fight again there.

Faced with no job prospects and a desire to rise in the estimation of their
peers, some young men were willing to take up arms in exchange for small
amounts of money, clothes and the promise of "wives."

Diplomats in Liberia and Sierra Leone, both of which are recovering from
years of civil war fought by young bands of drugged up fighters, have warned
that youth unemployment is the greatest threat to fragile efforts to
consolidate peace. But it was not just countries at war or recovering from
conflicts that were at threat, the United Nations said.

There was also the prospect of social instability and a huge outflow of
skilled workers from countries considered relatively successful, such as
Senegal. Some 3 million Senegalese nationals currently work abroad, most of
them as illegal immigrants, the government says.

Dakar's university, where the annual fee is 5,000 CFA, is so overcrowded
that eager students are forced to take notes on stairwells and corridors
outside packed lecture halls. But few see their skills remaining in Africa
for long.

"It's very disappointing after years of studying, after the hopes you have
and your family has, not to find a job," said Soumah Karim, 20, a first-year
law student from Guinea.
YAHOO

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html

To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤