Develop youth startup policy, Tanzania government told

Dar es Salaam. For Tanzania to curb the unemployment crisis among the youth, it should introduce a Youth Startup Policy to enable young people open up new businesses with ease, said a private business umbrella organization Tanzania Private Sector Foundation (TPSF).

Tanzania can borrow a leaf from neighbouring countries like Kenya and Uganda that already have such a document in place and the two have already started benefitting from them, said TPSF executive director Godfrey Simbeye.

He was speaking yesterday, shortly after presenting a paper on the measures that TPSF has taken to address the unemployment crisis in the country, during a dialogue on ‘Employability and Tanzania’s Industrialization Plan’, organized by VivaLegacy Training and Consultancy.

“As the private sector, we think it is high time the government looked into the possibility of introducing the policy in order to cut down the growing number of job seekers,” said TPSF boss.

Explaining further, he said TPSF was in talks with the government in order to see how such a policy could be introduced.

However, in a separate interview with The Citizen, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Prof Joseph Buchweishaija, said the government was currently reviewing various policies including those for trade, quality, industry and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

“If stakeholders think that a policy would be a solution then when we are reviewing those policies we will add this feature because we don’t want to have many policies,” he said

Prof Buchweishaija said there was an SMEs policy that covers youth, adding will also conduct analysis in other countries see how the policy works.

Furthermore, “That is a good idea from private sector we will meet with them to see how we can work on it.”

The TPSF boss said statistics showed that of those joining the labour force, only a few secured jobs in government.

“We want the youth to think about startups and new businesses instead of waiting to be employed because both government and private sector cannot employ all,” he noted.

“For example, for a person opening up a company in Tanzania, there are many roadblocks. After getting Tax Identification Number, an investor has to start paying tax on the following day. Where will such young people get money while the company is still new,” he added.

Opening the meeting, the deputy permanent secretary in the ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Dr Avemaria Semakafu, said number of youth believe that employment is only available in the government.

“We want to change this mindset among youth so that instead of thinking too much about employment should self employed by starting new business,” she said

Speaking at the event, VivaLegacy Training and Consultancy managing director Fortunata Temu said a number of researches have been conducted on unemployment among the youth and the only remaining thing was taking action to bring about change.

“That’s why we’ve invited various people here; so that we can point out all the challenges and find a way forward on solving the unemployment crisis,” she said.

TPSF also suggested that Tanzania can borrow a leaf from countries like Israel .