Analyzing Youth Employment Programs and Policies in Egypt

This report provides an overview of youth employment challenges in Egypt, highlighting the significant unemployment rates and the economic factors contributing to the issue. It discusses the impact of the 2008 financial crisis and the ongoing economic and political instability on youth employment. The report analyzes the approaches taken by the Egyptian government, including the 'Building Young Futures' program, the national training plan, and the National Action Plan (NAP) on youth employment, supported by the ILO and the Ministry of Manpower and Migration (MoMM). It evaluates the effectiveness of these programs based on employability, entrepreneurship, employment creation, and equal opportunities. The report also addresses the challenges in achieving youth employment goals, including the need for better-quality jobs and addressing vulnerabilities faced by young people. The report emphasizes the importance of evaluating the NAP through surveys, establishing a unit under MoMM for information collection, conducting external evaluations, and organizing conferences to discuss key performance indicators and make recommendations for improvement. The report concludes by emphasizing the need to create decent jobs and address the various social and economic obstacles faced by Egyptian youth to improve their employment prospects.

Introduction
In the recent years, youth employment has gained recognition all over the world. A number of
international forums, commitments are made to achieve the full and productive employment
levels and creating decent work opportunities for the young generation.
For the Egyptian Government, youth employment is a major challenge as the problems related to
employment are affecting both young women and young men in the country.
As per the figures recorded in the year 2014, the youth unemployment rate was observed around
29% (approximate), and youth suffering from poverty denoted 50%. The total number of people
who were leaving the country had shown an increase of 17% for the year 2014 as compared to
the year 2013. The youth leaving the country assumed unemployment as the main reason behind
their migration.
Egypt, at present, is in a stage of its demographic transition and this stage is popularly called as
"youth bulge." This means a period in which the graph of the young population shows a
significant growth in comparison to the other age groups (Kashyout, 2015). This is a special
framework that operates in Egypt at present, where some people have been successful in getting
jobs and are able to maintain their family. They enjoy financial as well as personal
independence. While, on the other hand there are some people who suffer from unemployment.
Thus, they are forced to migrate under the pressures of unemployment.
The economic situation
In the year 2008, the whole world was hit by a serious financial and economic crisis and the
effects of that crisis extended to various countries. It has affected mostly the young generation

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who are generally targeted first during any crisis and are kicked out first from the jobs and are
not able to find a job after a crisis (Assaad, 2014). This is the same situation that is prevailing in
Egypt. Due to this crisis, many young people in Egypt are migrating from the country to other
places where they can find better jobs.
Since 2008, Egypt has been facing serious economic challenges along with an unstable political
condition which has resulted in increased stagnation, poverty and unemployment in the country.
Out of those who are affected by unemployment, minimum 90% are the people who are below
30 years of age.
In the recent years a paradox has been observed as the young, educated people in Egypt are
unemployed, whereas, on the other hand, the Egyptian employers are finding it difficult to hire
duly qualified workers. This shows a failure in the education and training as it is not able to get
young people having the required skills as demanded by the labor market.
As per the report issued by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS)
for 2015, on youth population in Egypt, it is observed that out of the total population in Egypt,
23.6% is being represented by the Egyptian youth and which is around 20.7million in number.
Out of those, 26.3% of the youth is suffering from issues of unemployment, and around 51.2%
are suffering from the issues of poverty (Barsoum, 2014). The Youth which is observed to be
very close to the poverty line is around 27.8%, and the ones which are observed under the
poverty line are represented by 24.1%.

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Out of the total labor force in Egypt, 52% is being represented by the Young generation where
72.3% is represented by the young males and 33% by the young females.
Analysis of approaches taken by the government for youth employment
By observing the current situation of unemployment, it has been recommended that best solution
to overcome the problem is the creation of job opportunities for young people to enter the labor
force. The other solutions can include, providing incentives to the employers on reserving jobs
for the young generation.
There is a need to develop partnerships between the government and the private sector.
Integrated strategies need to be adopted to address the mismatch that is evident between the
skills possessed by young people and the skills required by the market.
The government has been developing the 'Building Young Futures' program in order to
develop the skills of young people at work as it has been observed that people generally possess
the theoretical knowledge about the work which they have chosen as their career but when they
are put to the actual working, they lack the practical skills required for the work. The program
shares an idea of focusing on the development of the work skills in youth starting from a very
earlier stage (15-17 years) that is much before they enter the labor market.
The government has also developed a national training plan in order to increase employment and
simultaneously to reduce unemployment in the country. The unemployment problems in the
country which is currently faced by over three million individuals which constitute 13.1% of the
total labor force in the country are supposed to be eliminated through this plan (Krause, 2016).

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The aim with which this plan was initiated was to provide jobs to over 2 million people. It was
observed by the end of year 2014 that jobs were generated for almost 170,000 people out of
which approximately 70% jobs were filled.
In May, Adel Labib, who was the Minister of Local Development, had announced of his
approval to over 1,000 projects in just one month which were an initiative towards the
community, human and local development. These projects were given the title-“Your Project”
and involved an investment of around EGP 34m.
On the World Youth Day, in the year 2014, CAPMAS report was released stating that the young
employed Egyptians between the age group of 18 and 29 consisted of 51.1% young males while
remaining 48.9% was represented by young females. Gradually, out of all the countries
belonging to the Secretary-General’s Youth Employment Network (YEN), Egypt was considered
to be a lead country (Assaad, 2016). YEN was a partnership done between the United Nations,
the ILO, and the World Bank.
As the leading country of YEN, the Government of Egypt prepared a National Action Plan on
youth employment (NAP) in support with the ILO. The process through which NAP has come
into existence has been supported strongly by the Ministry of Manpower and Migration
(MoMM). Since Egypt was a part of Yen, so as an initiative of Yen, it started the NAP in
February 2006. Under the scheme of NAP, various meetings were held concerning the problems
of youth unemployment under the leadership of the Ministry of Manpower and Migration of
Egypt.

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These meetings resulted in formation of two bodies; The NAP Steering Committee (NAPSC):
comprising of 25 decision-makers belonging to different Ministries, employers’ and workers’
organizations and some other key stakeholders. This committee is responsible for all the strategic
and political oversight of the NAP. And the other was The NAP Technical Commission (NAP-
TC): comprising of 15 technical experts from only the selected institutions and the social
partners and other youth groups. This commission is responsible for the drafting as well as
finalization of the NAP in consultation with the NAP-SC.
Before the introduction of Nap, there were some other initiatives which were started in order to
access training, finance and markets. The USAID Egypt Competitiveness Program (2011-13)
was started to address a number of problems going in the labor market. The program focused
mainly on human resources development and the interaction between the business and
government in order to support increased competitiveness, to get access to training, improve
entrepreneurship, for creating jobs and to get access to SME finance. It supported the
development of an environment which was conducive to competitiveness, having regulatory
policies and reforms which included the commercial laws and fiscal reforms (Jenkins, 2014).
Besides the development of entrepreneurial skills, vocational and technical training was also
imparted in order to improve the skills of youth at work and thereby their productivity in order to
meet the demands of the market. It also focused on strengthening of the financial sector, and
included measures to improve access to finance for SMEs for which it developed the regulatory
framework to be followed by the industries including the capital markets, mortgage provision,
insurance, etc.
Evaluating the program's effectiveness and its impact

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There is a need to evaluate the national action plan or the progress report submitted by the
country in order to check if it has adopted an integrated approach to meeting the supply and
demand of the youth employment policy (Barsoum, 2015). For this the four global priorities are
to be evaluated namely: Employability-which means to evaluate the number of jobs available
for the youth in the country, Entrepreneurship- which means to see if the employers are able to
recruit the persons with the required skills to fill in the vacant jobs, Employment creation-
which means to evaluate a countries ability to generate jobs for the youth so that they are not
forced to migrate from the country, Equal opportunities- which means to check that the jobs
created for the youth are equal in number for both- young men and young women. There should
not be any bias in providing jobs on the basis of gender.
These four policies give the framework for the evaluation of the plan. The evaluation (taking
these four policies as the base), is to be done through a regular sample survey. The survey should
be of young people and should be carried out at the national level. The questionnaire used in the
labor force sample survey must include additional questions on active labor market programs and
must be done quarterly by CAPMAS.
A unit should be established under the MoMM for evaluating the NAP, and that unit must be
made responsible for collecting all the information from different ministries, organizations, and
institutions, related to the development and progress of the annual work plans adopted by them
which are related to the NAP. The annual work plan will include details of all the activities
undertaken to achieve the objectives of NAP as well as the cost of the implementation of the
NAP.
An independent team of experts should also carry out an external in order to ensure the neutrality
and accuracy of the evaluation procedures of the NAP implementation. The results of this

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evaluation by these experts should then be presented in an annual conference which must be
organized by MoMM.
After the conference, a discussion must be done analyzing the detailed and extensive information
with respect to the key performance indicators (KPIs) for each outcome. These recommendations
given by the stakeholders in the conference shall be used as a tool in order to adjust, amend or
modify the actual NAP outcomes.
Besides this, the external evaluation team must also carry out a mid-term evaluation of the NAP.
The challenges in the achievement of the youth employment program
There are some challenges in the path of youth employment programs issued by Egyptian
Government, which need to be resolved in order to make these programs prove effective.
At present, the challenge in Egypt with regards to youth employment is not merely about
creating more jobs, but the quality of those jobs is also significant. The challenge is thus, to
create decent/better jobs for the youth.
Besides these challenges at jobs, there are certain other challenges faced by the youth of Egypt,
as they face some obstacles that make it vulnerable for them to cope with the physical, social,
economic, and psychological influences. Maximum young people do not even complete their
secondary school, approximately two-thirds of the school dropouts are constituted by young
girls, and not even one-fourth of the girls are able to attend the secondary schools in many of the
developing countries (Anyanwu , 2014). It has also been observed that the people who are newly
infected with HIV/AIDS, the majority of them is the youth, showing a higher rate of infection in

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young women as compared to young men. Other factors contributing to their vulnerability are
the disability, geographical location, or ethnic and social background.
These challenge in the path of youth employment programs started in Egypt are now being
recognized at international levels by the international community.
Besides these challenges, a poor economic and social environment can also result in the
conditions where the young people are forced into armed conflicts within the country and outside
which can again prove to be a challenge in the path of youth employment programs as the major
victims of such conflicts are again the Young generation.
Success and limitations of the program
The major limitations to the youth employment programs are: A lack of information, networks,
and connections among youth-This is the limitation of the youth especially belonging to the
families that lack significant social capital (Hanieh, 2015). They generally don’t have the
knowledge of what the work culture actually is, a lack of skills relevant to the workplace. -Even
the young people who have undergone an educational course for achieving a specific career,
have only the general or theoretical knowledge and not the actual practical knowledge about
tasks they will be doing the job, a lack of experience and credentials in addressing the risk of the
employers while making hiring commitments. - Many employers question the theoretical
knowledge and the practical knowledge of the youth and also question the social skills as well as
the work ethic of the youth, and a lack of available jobs suited to entry-level skills. -Sometimes
there is a mismatch between the number of young people looking out for work and the level of
local economic activity.

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In order to ensure the success of these employment plans, following things need to be achieved:
By diverting military aid for economic assistance in case of armed conflicts, by supporting the
public-sector reforms in order to put people back to work for a short term, by supporting the
private-sector developments in order to create job opportunities for medium-to-long term, by
promoting trade as well as investment in the country in the desired way, by working towards
achieving a better educated and more skilled labor force, and by channelizing support and
assistance towards the international community
Recommendations
It has been recommended that in order to eliminate the challenges and the limitations and in
order to ensure the success of these programs, one must encourage countries that formulated
national action plans for youth employment to move towards the implementation stage (Said,
2016). One should also encouraging the Governments in developing their own national action
plans and also to introduce new policy-oriented ways in order to monitor and evaluate the plans.
Conclusion
It can now be concluded that unemployment and underemployment among young people are not
merely a social issue but is also considered as an economic and political issue. It is also seen that
the youth employment policies focus mainly on the supply side (Moore, 2015). It has also been
observed that all the efforts in preparing young people better for work will fail if not
accompanied by policies. And it has been concluded that in order to ensure the success of youth

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employment plans and in order to have broad-based ownership, a proper process must be
included in the national action plans.

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