Let us explore a National Youth Service program in Uganda.

In the early 2000’s, a phrase was coined by some ‘intellectuals’ and it became common place. We were told to be job creators not job seekers. The days of finishing school and getting straight into the work environment or even being recruited while at university were behind us. The capacity of both the public and private sectors to absorb graduates had reduced and kept on a downward spiral. This implied that the competition for jobs was increasing and the chances of every qualified graduate getting employed were reducing significantly. Growth in most productive sectors was either stagnating or reducing. Cooperative societies that had for long driven the agriculture sector were collapsing one by one. The cost of production was increasing yet the returns on investment were not so encouraging. Coffee and cotton exports reduced significantly.

Most Parastatals had just been privatized and many of them were still restructuring and struggling to make profits. Meanwhile, Universities and technical institutions were churning out ever increasing theoretical degree and diploma wielding graduates into a job market that was constantly diminishing and is now almost nonexistent. Economic growth rates were reducing and at best stagnating in the subsequent years. Today, the competition for employment has reached unprecedented levels. To many youth now, graduation marks the start of a very uncertain future. The kind of future that makes them vulnerable and willing to do anything, even criminal, to make ends meet. With a youth unemployment level of about 83 percent, we have a time bomb on our hands. 

Last year, Kenya passed a law that makes it mandatory for all high school graduates to enroll in a National Youth service program as they await university enrollment, aimed at giving young people vocational training, empowerment and instilling patriotism amid economic and security challenges. South Africa, Nigeria and Jamaica are among the other countries with programs of a similar nature. While our ‘genius’ ministers and law makers mull over the idea of passing a law that forces us to be patriotic, other countries are actually doing something that instill it naturally. 

A national youth service program that combines training in specific career skills, re-socialization and work experience to develop positive attitudes and values among participants in the areas of self, work place, community and nation, as well as provide opportunities and orientation for their entrance into the work force is a much more effective tool to instill patriotism than a law that forces it down our throats. This program would be different from internships as it would emphasize community service and civic duty with participants rendered a small stipend to cater for transport and lunch costs. To minimize this cost, participants would be allocated placement in their home districts in organisations and local government departments that match their qualifications and career preferences. 

In Mexico, community service is compulsory for all Mexican university students. These students serve 480 hours of voluntary service during the course of a four year undergraduate education. The aim is to build solidarity among youth and encourage a sense of collaboration in community development. The government sponsored National Youth Commission in South Africa runs a national youth service program that enlists youth to fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS and reduce youth unemployment. In South America, Chile runs a competitive selection civil service program for university graduates with the goal of reducing rural poverty. Lawyers, engineers, medical practitioners and other carefully selected professionals are chosen after graduation to serve in rural areas for a period of 13 months. This approach offers a three pronged solution as the graduates gain the much needed experience, take services to the poor population in hard to reach areas and build working relationships with local people. 

Just like any program, a youth service would require quality control to be effective. Participants would have to be periodically monitored by service coordinators, get involved in career guidance sessions, reinforcement of civic values and prudent work ethos. After a period of one year in this service, the youth would be well equipped with the skills to enter the job market raising the quality of the labour force, and the rest would be enterprising enough to identify a niche and create their own practice.

The last issue would be funding for this program. Most countries that run such programs allocate funding from the consolidated fund. However, a new approach with contributions from the private sector and development partners can be explored to kick start this program in Uganda. Coordination would be conducted within a framework that includes the Ministries of Education, Public Service and the Private Sector Foundation of Uganda. If we are to address the ills of unemployment, avert the damage occasioned by a theoretical education system and drive a skills development agenda in this country, a national youth service program is something we must consider for university and high school graduates.

Can Africa leapfrog the carbon energy age? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Julian Popov is a journalist, consultant, and a former environment minister in the last Bulgarian interim government.

Some see Africa as the land of poverty, others as the continent with the fastest economic growth. That growth, and getting out of poverty, need energy. And more energy, common wisdom suggests, means more fossil fuels - coal, oil and gas. This is why climate change policy makers do not look much at Africa when it comes to pushing for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. They assume that in Africa the emissions should go up, and up, and up before they start going down. Look at China, India or Turkey and you get the picture.

There is, however, something that sets Africa apart from China, India or Turkey - its profound energy backwardness. Out of her one billion population, nearly 600 million have no access to an electricity grid. And Africa is the only continent where that number is expected to rise to reach 700 million by 2030.

Africa is also big. Its map can comfortably house the maps of US, India, China, Germany, France, Spain and a few other countries. And it is also sparsely populated. There are fewer people living in the entire African continent than in India, but India is 10 times smaller than Africa. Building electricity grids across such distances to reach families that live on $4-5 a day does not make sense. Getting the power grid to remote communities can be a costly venture and the returns are highly unlikely to justify the investment. For a long time, the poor communities will remain too poor to attract necessary power grid investment.

Something else, however, is happening in Africa that could change all that. Off grid solar energy is rapidly spreading. In the last few years over 7 million off-grid Africans have replaced their kerosene lamps with solar lights. This might be just 1 percent of the off-grid African population, but it is on a scale sufficient to introduce a technology that could disrupt the expected path of development. The reasons are at least four.

First, the change to the family budget that a solar light brings is significant. According to SolarAid, one of the organisations introducing solar lights to Africa, by replacing kerosene with solar power LED light in Tanzania, typically you can save more than a dollar a week. This is a significant amount of money for the 48 percent of the sub-Saharan people that live on less than $1.25 a day.

Second, solar power can be expanded and connected. You can get one panel and you will replace a kerosene lamp. Get two and you will be able to charge your mobile phone. Add another one and you can have a radio. With one more you might have a computer or a TV. In other words, the solar generation could add to your life different consumer products. And you can also team up with a neighbour and build a small local grid.

Third, the technological advances are staggering. The LED light uses five to 10 times less energy than the old incandescent light. Chinese, Spanish and German subsidies have turned photovoltaic panels into a commodity with a rapidly falling price. What looked 10 years ago like a rich government's game now is simply cheap. The cost of solar power is falling below new nuclear or gas generated power and even below coal, if you care to include into the electricity price the cost of all the environmental and health damage that coal causes.

Fourth, solar, and other renewable energy technologies do not need the hugely expensive power infrastructure required to bring the electricity generated by a nuclear reactor or a coal power block 2,000 kilometres to a poor African village.

Put these four reasons together and you will see that the traditional centralised power grid structure will lag far behind the economic and technological development of Africa. In other words, the off-grid electricity network will grow faster than the centralised energy economy. The centralised power grid economy will never be able to catch up with the faster growing off-grid economy.

By the time you secure financing for the 2,000 km grid to a remote village, it will have the LED lights at home and in school, chargers for mobiles phones, power for TVs and computers and mobile access to high quality education through the MOOC (mass online open courses) system.

And carbon free energy by no means stops at photovoltaic generation. Large parts of Africa offer excellent wind conditions. Micro hydro generation can also provide power that does not require a large power grid. There are already countries in Africa, like Rwanda, that are looking at a 100 percent renewable electricity option by 2020. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, this would be a much more economic option for Rwanda than relaying on fossil fuels.

If we want to help Africa, and the rest of the world, we should support the scaling up of a natural trend that would help Africa to leapfrog the carbon energy age. Last year, US President Barack Obama promised more than $7bn for the Power Africa programme. The money will most likely go into grids and conventional energy projects. Bad choice. But that could not stop Africa moving fast into the carbon free energy world. European political leaders should support the acceleration of this this natural economic development.

Africa never managed to build a proper telephone cable network. And it will never need it. The continent has nearly 500 million mobile connections and only 12 million fixed telephone lines. Something similar could happen with energy.