The Nexus Between Educated Youth Unemployment and Youth’s Capacity to Contribute Towards Wealth Creation in Zimbabwe

Abstract

This study was motivated by various literature and studies which agree that Zimbabwe’s unemployment has increased up to 95% and it is viewed as the highest in the world. It was most worrying from the statistics that most of those who make up the 95% are educated youths aged between 15 and 35 years. Given that the youths are the future of every country and given that government was pouring a lot of resources running into millions every year in producing educated youths by building schools, paying teachers, buying teaching and learning materials, such resources go to waste if the educated youths do not contribute to economic development. This research reviewed the nexus between educated youth unemployment and youth’s capacity to contribute towards wealth creation in Zimbabwe with specific reference to Chinhoyi Urban where most educated youths roam the streets. The study sought to find out the effects of educated youth unemployment in Zimbabwe and suggested innovative survival skills for educated youths to be entrepreneurs. This study adopted both the positivist and interpretivist paradigms as it was both quantitative (descriptive), and the qualitative (exploratory) The study adopted pragmatism as a research philosophy. From a population of 34,044 unemployed youths, a sample size of 100 was drawn. It was the finding of this study that Zimbabwe’s educated youths have the requisite skill and capabilities required to create wealth within the economy of Zimbabwe if they get access to capital and required start-up resources. The study recommended that entrepreneurship should be promoted from a tender age in the education system because entrepreneurship is not yet mainstreamed into the curriculum of some of the higher and tertiary institutions in Zimbabwe.

Keywords: Unemployment, Chinhoyi University of Technology, GDP, Employment, EYU