AFRICA - Unemployment in Africa: "A true crime against humanity"

Thursday, 18 January 2018 human rights work unemployment development society politics

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Soaudè (Agenzia Fides) - In Africa it is very difficult to find work. The phenomenon of unemployment in this continent affects about 32 million young people and the situation will worsen due to the strong gap between population growth and employment opportunities. Currently, half of the African population is under 14 years of age. "One of the first necessities of our time is the search for a job. Unemployment rate in many countries in Africa is very high", notes to Agenzia Fides Fr. Donald Zagore, missionary of the Society of African Missions (SMA).
"For example, about 23% of the population is unemployed in the Ivory Coast; 27.3% in South Africa; 18% in Gabon; 29.8% in Gambia, just to mention some. The most dramatic thing is that even those jobs that often border on exploitation, not to mention the more dignified ones, have become rare goods", continues the missionary.
"It is a social problem but also anthropological for Africans. It is grotesque to have to acknowledge that while the exploitation of man has always been considered a crime, there is even worse. In fact, currently the lack of exploitation, paradoxically, seems a real relegation. How many people today would be willing to do the worst job just to get an income and do not find one?" says Fr. Donald.
"It is really scary - says the missionary - to see that man is no longer needed, not even for any kind of exploitation. Man today is perceived as superfluous, he is destroyed. Unfortunately, as the French literary critic Viviane Forrester said, there are many men and women who are 'incompatible with a society of which they are still the most natural products'. Unfortunately, says the writer, we have moved from the phenomenon of exploitation to that of exclusion".
Fr. Zagore concludes: "Beyond the simple question of unemployment, it is the identity of the African man, it is his intrinsic nature of human being that is subjugated. This is why, more than ever, the fight against unemployment, against this crime, must occupy a dominant place in missionary activity". (DZ/AP) (Agenzia Fides, 18/1/2018)