Hiiraan Online
Thursday February 25, 2016
MOGADISHU (HOL) – Despite the rise in unemployment numbers and economic grievances in Somalia, president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has raised hope in a post-war economic growth, saying that his government created 2500 jobs last year in an attempt to tackle the unemployment.
According to the World Bank, Somalia’s development and humanitarian indicators are among the lowest in the world, with the overall unemployment rate among people aged 15 to 64 is estimated at 54 percent in Somalia, up from 47 percent since 2002.
Speaking at the sixth meeting of the High Level Partnership Forum on Somalia in Istanbul on Tuesday, president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said that his government had created 2500 jobs in 2015, with 70% of the population under the age of 30.
“We need hundreds of thousands of jobs. We must do more so that we have concrete projects all over Somalia– not just plans – that link youth development with education and with job creation.” He said.
Mr. Mohamud has also expressed frustration at the long waiting for a ‘small-scale’ infrastructure assessment to be completed by the international community to facilitate the forthcoming dedicated infrastructure fund which would have to ‘quickly’ identify projects to fund in Somalia.
“It is not enough that hundreds of thousands of Somali children are still not in school. It is not good enough that the first assessment of Somali schools is about to carried out only now- three years after we agreed that it was a first step.” He said.
In October last year, Somalia’s prime minister Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke has proposed the government’s ‘grand development plan’ to the United Nations Security Council to rebuild country’s social and physical infrastructure to help building a better future.
The horn of Africa nation which is recovering from decades of war is struggling to rebuild, with Mr. Sharmarke concentrated public services in his speech, saying that “many people around the world take for granted, then again Somalia lacks it completely, or has in very short supply.”
According to a recent report by the World Bank, Somalia is gradually raising political stability, marking a turnaround for the country ravaged by over two decades of civil war since 1991 which had destroyed the country’s entire infrastructure, forcing the impoverished nation to start picking up pieces from the scratch.