Specific Situation of Youth in Tanzania
- The total population of Tanzania is 37 million. 33 % of the total population is Youth, and 68 percent of the active labour force is young people.
- A youth in Tanzania is defined as a person between the ages of 15-35 years.
- The core problem facing youth in Tanzania is Unemployment. This problem is characterized by lack of job opportunities in urban areas, and underutilization of the majority of the national labour force in the rural.
- Youth from primacy, secondary and high learning institutions entering the labour force annually is about 700,000 but only 40,000 get employment into formal sector.
- The incidence of unemployment among the youth is relatively high. The youth constitute 60 % of all people who are unemployed.
- According to labour Force Survey 2001 unemployment rate for the whole country is 12.9 percent. Almost half of the unemployed live in urban areas. 46.5 percent of active people in Dar es Salaam is unemployed, unemployment for the other urban areas is 25.5 percent, and for rural areas is 8.4 percent.
- Lack of youth friendly services
Community leaders have a tendency to ignore youth issues, hence make unfriendly environmental which hinder youth development opportunities
Rural youth grow up in a culture that does not typically support entrepreneurship. They often seek employment by migrating to nearby cities and town. When they could not find jobs in town they engaged in dangerous behaviors such as petty theft, armed robbery, drug abuse and unsafe sex, which cause other social problem like spread of HIV/AIDS among youth, family crises, mental disease, and deaths.
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