Youth unemployment crisis on the wheels

After cycling all day on the streets of busy streets of Mzuzu, Kondwani Chihame hoped to make enough for the livelihood of his family. Belonging to an age bracket that accounts for 70 in every 100 Malawians, the 30-year-old bicycle taxi operator is part of a generation of unskilled young citizens hit by a prevailing unemployment crisis that threatens to worsen poverty in Malawi.

Energetic and still dreaming of a better future, unlicensed bicycle taxi operators present one of the most vivid signs of an acute shortage of jobs in the country’s trading centres. Since 2003, the population of bicycles for hire has boomed dramatically as thousands of young job seekers are increasingly fleeing rural areas in search for fresh pastures. Like Chihame, most of them end up in the informal sector in a desperate attempt to overcome a tough economic state that people with no requisite skills and academic qualifications for white-collar jobs often face.

“Kwerani, bwana (Lets go boss)!” exclaimed the man who migrated to the Northern Region’s commercial city from Kamphenda, Rumphi West, in 2008.

I looked around at nearly 50 bicycles on offer.

“Let’s go, boss!” the father-of-two insisted. He had to. City authorities say there are over 3 000 bicycle taxi operators scrambling for passengers in Mzuzu.

As we wheeled away, Chihame said he had knocked on many doors looking for a job as a messenger or a shopkeeper.

“I came to look for a job, but it didn’t go well because nobody wants to employ somebody with no skills, experience and education,” he said.

In his line of duty, Chihame works shoulder to shoulder with the youth possessing Malawi School Certificate of Education (MSCE). The secondary school leaving certificate is a prerequisite for higher learning, vocational training and employment. He dropped out of school in Standard Eight, but up to four out of every 10 bicycle operators that we surveyed obtained MSCE. His meagre earnings go to his family which lives in Sonda, a slum in the outskirts of the city.

In November last year, police officers launched a massive crackdown on passenger bicycles entering the commercial business district—confiscating at least 100 bikes from those defying the ban. For assistant commissioner John Nyondo, who pioneered the operation before being transferred to Blantyre, “cleansing the city of bicycles” was a continuation of a success story of law and order he is well remembered for in Chitipa and Kasungu where he was stationed previously.

For the bicycle operators, the enforcement of traffic laws and city by-laws by the government arm is not just scratching the surface of the problem.

It is worsening poverty among youth with limited alternatives—with Northern Region Police spokesperson, inspector Maurice Chapola, forecasting “crime would be on the increase as some of them would join gangs of criminals in the absence of bicycle taxis.”

Maxwell Munthali, a 21-year-old who ventured into the business after a frustrating five years of loafing having acquired the MSCE in 2008, was candid about the plight of the youth.

He explained: “When the law enforcers arrest us, beat us and grab our bicycles, they forget this is a desperate effort to generate income.”

International Labour Organisation new report says nearly 23 in every 100 young Malawians aged 15-34 are jobless.

Despairing young workers subsisting on bicycle taxis, street vending and piece works say the problem could be graver.

The 2013 ILO report shows 70 percent of the youth aged15-29 are pushed into the informal sector.

Daily the young entrepreneurs, who either own the bicycles or hire the vehicle at K1 000 a day, transport everything from people to goods.

The report, Global Unemployment Trends for Youth 2013, bills the young Malawians as a generation at risk with about 66 percent of them completing secondary education. It says five out of 10 young Malawian workers are undereducated or overeducated for the work they do—with six out of 10 getting below-average wages due to lack of work experience and a fragile industrial base compounded by numerous obstacles, including unreliable electricity supply, high transportation costs and an exorbitant tax regime.

It is no secret that school dropouts like Mphatso find stable and decent employment almost unattainable, says Youth and Society executive director Charles Kajoloweka.

He observes: “It is evident that young people involved in these precarious activities have no alternative. Most of them have basic education and there aren’t many openings for skills development in the country.”

He adds that young Malawians only need to realise their numerical advantage to stage a political and economic revolution to break away from their devastating living conditions and change the rest of the population.

“The youth do not know their power to change things and no politician seems to have any idea on how to end unemployment,” says Kajoloweka.

The decried cluelessness started with founding president Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda who founded the Malawi Young Pioneer as a state-run youth empowerment agency only to turn it into a paramilitary wing of his Malawi Congress Party.

Following his fall from power in 1994, Bakili Muluzi rose to power as a self-crowned “Minister of Vendors” without investing in developing emerging entrepreneurs’ business skills. Not only did this spark an overspill of vendors in the streets, which compelled his successor Bingu wa Mutharika to order Operation Dongosolo, but also the emergence of bicycle taxi business.

Bingu might have evicted street vendors to designated markets, but he introduced a youth entrepreneurship loan which largely benefitted his party members; built the Malawi University of Science and Technology (Must) which has increased public universities’ enrolment by 302 places; and introduced the quota system of equitably distributing limited spaces in public higher learning institutions according to learners’ districts of origin.

After Bingu, came Joyce Banda who prides herself at modernising Chihame’s sector by introducing motorcycle taxis termed “Bodaboda.”

Since March, the country has been buzzing with the introduction of community technical colleges which President Peter Mutharika promised ahead of his election last year.

‘Poverty alleviation through job creation’ is the motto of the colleges that Minister of Labour, Youth and Manpower Development Henry Mussa envisages lessening the burden of youth unemployment.

“Secondary schools produce about 50 000 students every year, but few get access to universities and technical colleges. It’s unacceptable and government cannot sit aside while nearly two million young Malawians are loafing with certificates in the pocket,” said Mussa when he visited Mtwalo Community College in Mzimba.”