Job creation still number one priority of Government of Ghana

Job creation still remains the number one priority of the Government of Ghana (GoG) in the pursuit of her “Better Ghana” agenda.
To help realize her dream, the GoG through the National Youth Employment Program (NYEP) and the National Youth Council (NYC) has partnered with the Youth Enterprise and Skills Development (YESDEC) in an ambitious project aimed at engaging scores of unemployment youth in job creation.
The focus of the project is in Agro-processing, Manufacturing, Services and Environmental Sanitation sectors.
Employment in the public sector is already overstretched and the Government of Ghana therefore sees this initiative as an avenue to cut the ever increasing unemployment rate down.
“Recruiting young people and putting them on payroll was going to be unsustainable in the near future” remarked Abuga Pele, Coordinator of the National Youth Employment Program at the program’s launch in Accra on Wednesday.
The NYEP Coordinator sees the public-private initiative as one that would encourage and afford the youth of Ghana an opportunity to create wealth and participate in the development of the nation.
“This is a legacy we can leave as a nation for our young and up-coming youth,” he noted.
Initiators of the project say over forty thousand unemployment youth including beneficiaries of the NYEP who are exiting after their tenure are expected to benefit from the program.
However, a target of one thousand youth, according the NYEP Coordinator, is expected to be engaged by November 2011.
Madam Akua Sena Dansua, out-going Minister of Youth and Sports under whose jurisdiction falls the NYEP said over ninety seven thousand youth are currently engaged in various programs in the areas of Youth in Film production, Grass cutter rearing, Airport Assistants, Community Police among many others.
She expressed the hope that the YESDEC-NYEP module would compliment the Government of Ghana’s effort aimed at creating direct employment for over seven hundred and fifty thousand (750,000) youth through a four-year period, beginning in 2010-2013.
The Coordinator of YESDEC, Mavis Yamoah told The Chronicle in an interview that her outfit’s partnership with the NYEP is targeting the setup of micro businesses for one thousand youth in the ten regions of the country by the end of 2011.
So far, the YESDEC project has till date trained and assisted over two hundred youth in business to successfully set up new businesses.
Key areas that YESDEC has provided training and simple logistics include Transportation of food stuff from farm gates to commercial or market centres, agro-processing and packaging, water tanker delivery services in water deprived communities, machine shop enterprise, ICT support centres, block construction, catering services and garment and beauty care enterprises.
The beneficiaries, according to initiators of the project would have the opportunity to own the equipments and supported to payback through the various banks by installment over a two-year period.

Yara injects $20m into Tanzania’s economy

Yara International ASA, a leading global fertilizer company is injecting US$20m into Tanzania’s economy to fuel the country’s agricultural growth.
The amount according to company officials would be invested into a new fertilizer terminal by the port in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s commercial city.
Announcing the feat on Thursday in Dar es Salaam, CEO of Yara, Joergen Haslestad said “This strengthens Yara’s long term commitment to development of Tanzania’s agricultural sector. In the years to come the agricultural sector has the potential to be a key driver of economic growth, providing business opportunities. Tanzania stands out as a natural hub for regional growth.”
Yara believes that investing in increased port capacity is a strategic step that would position the company for the growth it has long been yearning for whilst providing a boost in the value chain.
Yara presently supplies 120,000 tons of fertilizer annually to the region. The new terminal will have a revolving storage capacity of 45,000 tons of fertilizer, which will be sufficient for the medium term requirement, and the location allows for new capacity to be added for long term requirements.
Sustainable growth
The initiative raises a promise of sustainable growth, aiming at reducing rural poverty both through providing opportunities for smallholder farmers and creating new jobs, says Mr. Haslestad.
Officials of the company estimate that the US$20million investment in Tanzania would lift two million people out of poverty, and bring in annual revenues of US$1.4billion.
Yara has been a partner in the Tanzania Agriculture Partnership since 2006 and was also instrumental to the process leading to the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT).
The SAGCOT is driven by a unique partnership of public, private and donor companies and organizations.
In the recently released ‘Blueprint for Investment’, the SAGCOT outlines how a shared value creation approach can be used to tackle some of the key constraints to development. The result, over a 20 year period, would be over 350,000 hectares under commercial production, much of it farmed by emergent and smallholder farmers.
Yara International ASA is the world’s leading chemical company that converts energy, natural minerals and nitrogen from the air into essential products for farmers and industrial customers.