South Africa’s inaugural Jobs Summit was convened in Johannesburg last week to brainstorm on possible solutions to the country’s stubborn unemployment scourge.

Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) tells us that the unemployment rate stood at 27.2% in the second quarter of this year, a deterioration from 26.7% in the preceding three months. This compares with the National Development Plan aspiration of 14% unemployment by 2020 – just over a year from now – with a further reduction to only 6% by 2030.

But percentages somewhat mask the enormity of the problem. The current rate of 27.2% equates to 9.6-million economically active South Africans roaming the streets, 6.1-million of whom are aged between 15 and 34. Stats SA revealed when it released the second-quarter figures that 90 000 people had joined the ranks of the unemployed in April, May and June. We definitely have a crisis on our hands.

But unemployment, especially among the youth, is a continentwide problem. In fact, according to Africa Capacity Building Foundation executive secretary Professor Emmanuel Nnadozie, “there is practically no African country that doesn’t have youth unemployment as its number one challenge”. A Nigerian-born economist who has had an illustrious career as an academic in the US and as a top-level official at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, he told an interviewer not so long ago: “I have been weighing the challenge of youth unemployment and climate change. Which one is the more serious? I think youth unemployment is Africa’s number one problem.”

And he sounds a chilling warning: nefarious groupings like Boko Haram, which has wrought havoc in north-eastern Nigerian during the past few years, could take advantage of hopeless, unemployed young people and use them to destabilise governments.

Numerous studies have attributed Africa’s youth unemployment scourge to deficiencies in basic education and job-irrelevant skills training, among other factors. On these two scores, one hopes that the powers that be in South Africa will do the correct thing and stop expending their energies on ensuring that history becomes a compulsory subject in our schools and that Swahili is offered as an optional second language. The money that these pursuits would require would be better spent developing our mathematics and science educators so that our learners cease to place lowly in international rankings. Currently, the mathematics and science proficiency of learners from some African countries that are among the poorest on earth is much better than that of our learners.

While South Africa’s unemployment rate – in all age bands – is currently 27.2%, the African average was only 7.9% in 2017. But this low figure masks a sobering reality that is revealed in the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO’s) ‘World Employment Social Outlook Trends 2018’ report: many employed Africans and their families are languishing in poverty. In sub-Saharan Africa, the report states, 36.6% of employed people experience ‘extreme working poverty’, which means they survive on less than $1.90 a day in purchasing power parity terms. Those living in ‘moderate working poverty’ – with daily living expenses of $1.90 to $3.10 – comprise 24.4% of the region’s workforce. In number terms, 228-million citizens of sub-Saharan African countries have to contend with moderate or extreme working poverty.

It is young people who bear the brunt of working poverty in the region. Over the past ten years, the number of youth falling into this category has increased by more than seven-million to about 58-million – or 67% of all employed youth.

Africa also has the dubious honour of having the highest rate of vulnerable employment, with 290-million people, or 66% of all employed Africans, being in such employment during 2017. The ILO expected a nine-million surge in 2018, with the largest increase occurring in sub-Saharan Africa.

Hali ni mbaya sana (that’s Swahili for ‘the situation is dire’). As you can see, I am already brushing up on my Swahili, just in case Angie Motshekga forges ahead with her plans to introduce it as a school subject, which could result in it becoming commonplace on these shores.