Abstract:

Youth unemployment remains a global threat pushing youths to participate in various unlawful and dangerous activities. In Zimbabwe, a weak economy and domestic sociopolitical challenges have pushed youth unemployment rates to one of the highest in the continent and globally. Despite accounting for the largest population, Zimbabwean youths continue to be marginalized from the national development discourse, and this has had a general negative impact on the Zimbabwean national development agenda. The National Youth Policy, enacted in 2000 by the government to address youth unemployment through a multi-sectoral framework, has resulted in minimal progress. This paper adopts an in-depth qualitative literature review of academic articles, government reports, World Bank and IMF reports to conduct an analysis of the root causes of high youth unemployment rates in Zimbabwe, its effects and the performance of the measures undertaken by the government to address the problem. This study has identified frequent economic crises, weak education system, and poor implementation of macroeconomic policies by the government as some of the challenges increasing the rates of youth unemployment.

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