The 800 pound gorilla called unemployment

In my honest opinion, the concept of mass youth unemployment remains a very distant concept to me. I am humble enough to say that I don't know what it really means to be jobless. I hope my naivety can be forgiven. My guts tell me that most of the people (Oga at the top) that we expect to create jobs don't have a clue what it means not to have a job. They can't help us because they don't just gerrit! What most of us don’t know is that you really don’t have a right to create, serve or lead if you lack the human skill of empathy. (Now that’s a line you should tweet right there). lol

Everywhere I turn these days, I hear “the world is changing very fast”. It’s changing faster than most of us can possibly phantom. In the midst of these major shifts, new realities are created. All you have to do is look around you to see this. Chances are that before I finish typing these words, Google Android would have released a new operating system. Competition has married Collaboration giving birth to a new practice called "Co-opetition". Local has kissed Global to create "Glocal". In this knowledge economy, the rules have changed but the fundamental struggle remains. It’s about productivity. Productivity is the oldest economic cliché.

To win this heavyweight gorilla, I have a couple of points to make: 

A new definition of poverty

We now know that poverty is not the lack of money. The new definition of poverty is the lack of emotional intelligence. It is possible to have the most money and yet be poor. If you lack empathy, you are NOT human.

Creative Capitalism

Competition is a panacea for growth but in this new economy, collaboration must mix with the spirit of enterprise to ensure a sustainable future for the inhabitants of this planet. Talk of Creative Capitalism. 

A new model of education

For centuries we have sought to educate people in a certain way, shouldn’t we change the gear at this point? Enough of dress rehearsals! Pupils at all levels (including kindergarten) should be equipped with the tools and imparted with the skills to solve real problems.  

Some questions

Why should graduates look for jobs? Why does it sound weird when a graduate nurses an entrepreneurial ambition? What’s the point of studying for years only to come out still incapable of producing? How much of scholarly education did our unschooled parents need to create wealth (some of us still survive on the old money those people created). 

Money answereth all things

Once you cross that impressionable age and the realities of paying bills set in, it becomes very clear that money is a big part of life and living. Most of us have to figure out what money is on our own (in most cases, we learn the hard and bitter way). Very few have a clue about how to make money. A handful possesses the skills to multiply money. So why is it that MONEY is not taught in our schools? Why is it that many of us can’t differentiate between what an Asset is as being different from a Liability? (If many of us know what an Asset is, we won’t go to church or Mosque to testify when we buy a personal car with bank loan). 

To combat and win this gorilla, we require what in the words of Idiare Atimomo is War by Other Means.