By: Augusta Osmatu Bangura
At some point, almost every young Sierra Leonean hears some version of the same advice: go to school, get an education, learn a skill and make something of yourself. It sounds simple and perhaps that is why it is repeated so often. When jobs are scarce, young people are told to learn a trade. When degrees are not enough, they are told to acquire additional skills. When technology changes, they are told to learn digital skills. When employment remains elusive, entrepreneurship is presented as another door. The message that never gets outdated though is: equip yourself, and opportunity will follow. But what if the problem is not only that young people lack skills? What if we have become so accustomed to asking young people to make themselves employable that we have stopped asking whether the economy is creating enough opportunities for the people we are preparing?
Sierra Leone’s Youth Employment Scheme aims to create 500,000 pathways to dignified work by 2030, with measures including technical and vocational education, apprenticeships, internships, digital-skills bootcamps and a national youth skills fund. The government’s own description of the scheme acknowledges that many young people are educated but not employable, while others lack basic or digital skills. There is nothing wrong with that diagnosis, skills matter. But skills are only one side of the employment equation.
A young person can learn coding and still struggle to find a client. A graduate can collect certificates and still spend months applying for jobs. Someone can learn tailoring, hairdressing, catering or graphic design and still lack the capital, electricity, equipment, market access or customers needed to turn that skill into a sustainable livelihood. We cannot skill our way out of an employment crisis if we do not also build an economy capable of using those skills.
That is the uncomfortable part of the conversation. The pressure to keep adding certificates For young people, the race can feel endless. First, there is the degree, then perhaps a short course, another certificate, then computer literacy, then digital marketing, then entrepreneurship, then perhaps artificial intelligence… the list keeps growing.
Sierra Leone and its development partners are already investing in this direction. The International Trade Centre’s READY Salone programme, for example, aims to equip 3,000 young Sierra Leoneans with digital skills over four years to improve their employment and income-generating prospects. The Ministry of Communication, Technology and Innovation has also launched Learn2Earn, a programme intended to prepare young people for digital freelancing and participation in the global gig economy.
These initiatives are important, but they also raise a question that deserves more attention: After the training, then what? Where are the jobs? Where are the clients? Where are the businesses ready to hire? Where is the infrastructure that allows someone trained in a digital skill to actually work? And how many young people can realistically become entrepreneurs in a market where thousands are being encouraged to do the same thing? Entrepreneurship cannot become a polite word for unemployment
There is an increasing tendency to tell young people to “create their own jobs.” Again, entrepreneurship has enormous value. Small businesses keep households alive, create employment and provide services communities depend on. But we should be careful about turning entrepreneurship into the default answer whenever formal employment fails. Not every unemployed graduate is secretly an entrepreneur waiting to be discovered. Some want to be teachers, some want to be nurses, some want to work in banks, media houses, government offices, technology companies or manufacturing, some want to become engineers, researchers or accountants, and yes, some genuinely want to build businesses. We need room for all of these aspirations. A young person should not have to reinterpret unemployment as entrepreneurship simply because there are not enough vacancies.
The government’s employment strategy recognises the importance of aligning skills with market needs. Its Youth Employment Scheme includes apprenticeships and internships, technical and vocational education, digital skills and a stated goal of creating a skilled workforce aligned with those needs. That alignment is crucial because there is little value in training thousands of people for opportunities that barely exist. If the country needs more technicians, then training should lead somewhere. If the future is digital, young people need more than lessons in coding or digital marketing. They need reliable connectivity, affordable technology, electricity, platforms through which they can find work and payment systems that allow them to participate in the wider economy. The bridge between education and employment cannot be built on certificates alone. It needs employers, investment, infrastructure, functioning markets, access to finance, and, perhaps most importantly, it needs a deliberate connection between what we teach young people and what the economy is actually prepared to reward.
Every year, more young people move toward working age. The International Growth Centre has described the country’s employment challenge as severe, noting that more than 70 percent of its youthful population are unemployed or underemployed. That means the stakes are bigger than an individual graduate’s frustration after another unsuccessful job application. If a young person spends years being told that education is the route to a better life, only to emerge into an economy with too few opportunities, disappointment does not remain an individual problem, it becomes a national one. And that is why the conversation around youth employment needs to move beyond “What skills do young people lack?” We should also ask: What opportunities are we creating for the skills they acquire?
Young people absolutely have responsibilities.
They should seek knowledge, develop useful skills, remain adaptable, take advantage of training opportunities when they are available, but employability cannot be treated as a burden that belongs entirely to the individual. A young person cannot create a functioning labour market alone. The responsibility must therefore be shared between young people, educational institutions, government, businesses and development partners. Universities need to pay attention to what happens to graduates after they leave. Training programmes need to measure not only how many people were trained, but how many found work, started sustainable businesses or increased their incomes afterwards. Employers need to be part of conversations about the skills they actually need. And government must continue working on the conditions that allow businesses to grow and employ people. So, perhaps now, alongside asking young people to prepare, we should ask the country to prepare too.
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Copyright –Published in Expo Times News on Monday, 7th September 2026 (ExpoTimes News – Expo Media Group (expomediasl.com)
