Dormant workforce in Africa

[Great vitalis]

There's a lot of dormant workforce in Africa as many of them face unemployment and low pay this is a huge problem so I started this thread to see if anyone has ideas that might address this issue

 

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[Mikkel]

This is a very broad topic. There are countless hurdles that have left Africa in the state that it currently is today.

1. Small amount of coast line compared to its land mass.
2. Limited number of rivers connecting to the ocean.
3. Multiple countries that are land-locked that must pay some sort of tax for imports and exports to the other countries it travels though.
4. Poor quality roads and reduced number of roads leading to increased cost of transport.
5. Poor infrastructure, leading to inefficiencies
6. Significant government regulations for business.
7. Corruption
8. Increased difficulty to start a business(extra paper work, filing fees, licensing)
9. Lack of technology leads to inefficiencies
10. Poor adherence to property rights

I'm sure there are more. However, geography plays a major factor in how any country or continent interacts with the global community.

Transport via sea freight is by far the cheapest and most effective method of transport. It is not a coincidence that South Africa is one of the more successful countries in Africa. All sea freight that must go around Africa must pass right by South Africa, which means it allows for increased trade. Other countries that are on the sea coast in Africa can still have the same benefit but the shear volume of traffic is not as vast as compared to S. Africa so that is a benefit. Also, these sea ports have to intice sea freoght companies to use their ports. If they have less infrastructure or if their harbors are shallow then only smaller ships can dock.

Whenever there is an increased cost of transport, the area will be more poor. Look at the United States. The richest cities are port cities(NYC, LA, Boston). Some of the poorest areas would be West Virgina, they have many mountains.

 

[Kalactose]

What's the unemployment rate? YES!

My brother graduated in civil engineering with very exceptional grades... No job in 2 years.

So I started to investigate and asked if anyone in his set is employed...NONE.

Out of over 80 graduates of civil engineering, none of them are employed. And that's just one set from one university.

This pattern is the same throughout most degrees except law and medicine. Yet people still blindly enroll to School hoping they'll get something good.

If Nigeria itself says Youth employment rate is 53.4% then the reality is somewhere around 95%.

I have dropped out in my third year of studying engineering despite having excellent grades.

Honestly, sometimes it's hard to pity some broke, unemployed twenty something year old struggling because they clearly knew that they would for sure not succeed if they kept on this path. But they still did.

 

[The-J]

There's a lot of dormant workforce in Africa as many of them face unemployment and low pay this is a huge problem so I started this thread to see if anyone has ideas that might address this issue

I used to hire university-educated English-speaking Kenyans as content writers before ChatGPT.

Many African countries are struggling because they have an educated labor force but they lack opportunities. There are many reasons for this, but it's mainly that the local economy simply doesn't need people with those skills. Service-based economies exist in richer countries because there are companies and organizations that need that labor.

A lot of them are finding success on PeoplePerHour, Upwork, and Fiverr. They've found that being part of the "cheap freelance" labor market can make them enough to sustain themselves at home. It's not hard to get enough freelance work to make $500-1000 USD/month, and that might be enough. But you gotta speak English and speak it well. And you gotta have a skill that the global market wants. You gotta be willing to work in those time zones, too.

There's a market for helping Africans reach the global market. English courses are probably the first step (@Isaac Odongo made one and is selling multiple copies a week now). Then they need to learn how to pick up skills on their own and how to leverage the skills they already have. Many Africans don't have a great PC setup so a lot of them have to go somewhere to use a PC.

The global market needs labor, but it doesn't need all labor. The Western world is suffering from labor shortages in nursing, construction, childcare, and more. If there was a way for an African to start selling construction labor in Western countries, they'd probably do pretty well. You just can't do these things online, you gotta go to the country, you gotta have legal status in that country.

It's not an impossible situation, but if there were enough resources to help Africans actually tap into what the global market needs, more of them would be able to sustain themselves.

 

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[Kalactose]

I used to hire university-educated English-speaking Kenyans as content writers before ChatGPT.

I don't why I laughed so hard at this

 

[Aidan04]

I used to hire university-educated English-speaking Kenyans as content writers before ChatGPT.

Many African countries are struggling because they have an educated labor force but they lack opportunities. There are many reasons for this, but it's mainly that the local economy simply doesn't need people with those skills. Service-based economies exist in richer countries because there are companies and organizations that need that labor.

A lot of them are finding success on PeoplePerHour, Upwork, and Fiverr. They've found that being part of the "cheap freelance" labor market can make them enough to sustain themselves at home. It's not hard to get enough freelance work to make $500-1000 USD/month, and that might be enough. But you gotta speak English and speak it well. And you gotta have a skill that the global market wants. You gotta be willing to work in those time zones, too.

There's a market for helping Africans reach the global market. English courses are probably the first step (@Isaac Odongo made one and is selling multiple copies a week now). Then they need to learn how to pick up skills on their own and how to leverage the skills they already have. Many Africans don't have a great PC setup so a lot of them have to go somewhere to use a PC.

The global market needs labor, but it doesn't need all labor. The Western world is suffering from labor shortages in nursing, construction, childcare, and more. If there was a way for an African to start selling construction labor in Western countries, they'd probably do pretty well. You just can't do these things online, you gotta go to the country, you gotta have legal status in that country.

It's not an impossible situation, but if there were enough resources to help Africans actually tap into what the global market needs, more of them would be able to sustain themselves.

There's an idea I had a while back about shipping small, single-board-based computers to less developed countries. I've built a few of them with inbuilt mesh networking capabilities and solar panels/batteries. I know this does not fulfill the labor need you spoke about, but maybe if everyone in central Africa was linked up using small low-cost solar computers, they may have a shot at building a better economy. These computers could even include offline copies of Wikipedia and thousands of other important resources we take for granted in more developed places.

 

[Kalactose]

There's an idea I had a while back about shipping small, single-board-based computers to less developed countries. I've built a few of them with inbuilt mesh networking capabilities and solar panels/batteries. I know this does not fulfill the labor need you spoke about, but maybe if everyone in central Africa was linked up using small low-cost solar computers, they may have a shot at building a better economy. These computers could even include offline copies of Wikipedia and thousands of other important resources we take for granted in more developed places.

Bro... Give us water first.

 

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[Aidan04]

Bro... Give us water first.

How's the humidity where you're at? I might be able to come up with something....

 

[Kalactose]

Humidity is pretty high actually. Wait.... Condensating water? How?

 

[Isaac Odongo]

Africa's population grows faster than the economy can keep up.

Africa's schools send out more graduates than the economy can employ, such that in some places and industries it is a ratio of 1000:1 for job candidates and job openings.

Africa wants more companies capable of employing thousands.

I said earlier that Africa wants more multi billion dollar companies and more billionaires.

This is the only way Africa will solve this dormant work force problem.

 

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[Aidan04]

Africa's population grows faster than the economy can keep up.

Africa's schools send out more graduates than the economy can employ, such that in some places and industries it is a ratio of 1000:1 for job candidates and job openings.

Africa wants more companies capable of employing thousands.

I said earlier that Africa wants more multi billion dollar companies and more billionaires.

This is the only way Africa will solve this dormant work force problem.

To do this, Africa will most definitely need new infrastructure. Self sustaining systems that aren't owned by companies. We don't want a "company towns" situation here. I'm thinking this might be a potential avenue to explore.

 

[Aidan04]

Humidity is pretty high actually. Wait.... Condensating water? How?

Idea I had awhile back:

A dehumidifier unit will condensate water out of humid air. If you let one run outside, it fills up very quickly.

The problem is that dehumidifier water is not meant to be drank. It can contain nasty chemicals and bacterial compounds.

So what do you do? Have water directly feed into a distillation unit instead of going into the dehumidifier tank. The water will be boiled and cooled into drinkable and hydrating water (albeit without minerals).

These two components could actually just be combined into one unit. Each household could have a small one or every town/village could have a giant one hooked up to piping.

This could be powered by solar panels fixed to the top of the unit.

 

[Kalactose]

Idea I had awhile back:

A dehumidifier unit will condensate water out of humid air. If you let one run outside, it fills up very quickly.

The problem is that dehumidifier water is not meant to be drank. It can contain nasty chemicals and bacterial compounds.

So what do you do? Have water directly feed into a distillation unit instead of going into the dehumidifier tank. The water will be boiled and cooled into drinkable and hydrating water (albeit without minerals).

These two components could actually just be combined into one unit. Each household could have a small one or every town/village could have a giant one hooked up to piping.

This could be powered by solar panels fixed to the top of the unit.

Very interesting. The unit would consume a lot of power though.

You would need a ton of solar panels to boil anything not to talk of enough water to supply a small town.

Isn't there some kind of electrolyte that kills bacteria and stuff like that? I think campers use it to filter river waters and make it safe for drinking.

 

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[Aidan04]

Very interesting. The unit would consume a lot of power though.

You would need a ton of solar panels to boil anything not to talk of enough water to supply a small town.

Isn't there some kind of electrolyte that kills bacteria and stuff like that? I think campers use it to filter river waters and make it safe for drinking.

It most likely would consume a lot of energy in a large unit. A small unit would probably take a standard panel or two.

I'm not entirely sure about that but I do know there are things like water filtration straws and water bottles that may be a more portable solution for water.

I envision handing out kits to every person in need.

Maybe include things like:
-Solar powered mesh networking laptop (or pocket terminal) with inbuilt gigabytes of educational and informational data
- Portable water filtration unit/bottle
- Cheap smartphone
-High calorically dense ration units

Unsure what else to add here, what other practical problems are people facing over there?