Washington- It is not uncommon for hundreds of youth to gather in Casablanca or Rabat to protest the government’s slow action to improve youth unemployment. However, some youth have taken matters into their own hands to improve their situations, having lost faith in the government. Now over two years after the Arab Spring, the youth in Morocco are trying a different tactic to end unemployment.
Washington- It is not uncommon for hundreds of youth to gather in Casablanca or Rabat to protest the government’s slow action to improve youth unemployment. However, some youth have taken matters into their own hands to improve their situations, having lost faith in the government. Now over two years after the Arab Spring, the youth in Morocco are trying a different tactic to end unemployment.
A recent BBC Business report profiles Yassine Boukourizia, a young Moroccan who set up an internet radio station in Casablanca to provide opportunities for youth in Morocco to engage with each other, receive training, and exchange ideas. Not considering himself an entrepreneur, Boukourizia, Executive Director of Dar Blanca, explained that he just wanted to help future generations.
“I’ve never been trained before in how to make [opportunities] or how to run for competition in jobs, or something like that, that’s why we came up with this idea, to give the new generation things that we didn’t have access to,” explained Boukourizia.
Dar Blanca has a staff of 60 youth volunteers, all looking for work. They receive training on how to hunt for jobs and start their own businesses, then they pass on those messages through their broadcasts, sharing tips with other unemployed people over the airwaves. Their most important message: for young people to make their own opportunities and stop waiting for the government help that may never come.
Mohammed Zriki, a Dar Blanca volunteer and philosophy graduate has been out of work for over six months. His sentiments are bittersweet: “the first problem in Morocco is that people think that everything is easily handed to them on a plate. We must work, we need to train in order to improve ourselves. The problem here in Morocco is [people’s] mentality.”
Rightfully so, university graduates like Zriki have lost faith in the government pulling through and giving jobs to educated youth. There are abundant feelings of failed expectations in Morocco from youth who completed degrees only to find that no jobs are available.
The government, especially recently, has been spouting optimistic rhetoric of making youth education a priority. In fact, King Mohammed VI dedicated Moroccan Youth Day to his commitment to improving youth education.
The government’s push for education, however, presents an important paradox: what happens after you educate your youth if there are no jobs available?
Unemployment cannot be solved by simply training young people—it goes much deeper.
Mehdi Lahlou of the National Institute of Statistics and Applied Economics believes that there needs to be deep institutional change in Morocco to improve the situations of young people. “There needs to be a suitable investment and economic climate. In order for this to happen we need to get rid of corruption, which is a big problem here. And establish a suitable and reliable legal system, which isn’t the case right now,” he says. “There also needs to be economic and fiscal policies implemented in order to help create jobs, “ added Lahlou.
There have been some development initiatives made by cooperative agreements between Morocco and the international community. For example, the World Bank recently financed an entrepreneurship initiative in Morocco to assist young Moroccans with starting their own businesses. However, this is a ‘second chance’ program, one designed for under-educated Moroccans to have a second chance at starting a career, without necessarily going back to school.
Programs like these, however, still leave a gap in the job market for educated, qualified young Moroccans who have yet to find jobs. Therefore, in whose hands does the future of young, educated Moroccans lie?
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