Pretoria- All African Commonwealth countries are faced with a large number of unemployed youth said Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor.
Delivering her opening address at the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association African Region Conference on Tuesday, Pandor said youth unemployment in South Africa is also very high.
"All African Commonwealth countries face a huge problem of youth unemployment. It is also very unevenly distributed. It is concentrated among young, unskilled blacks," she said.
Pandor said the best contribution government can make to solve the unemployment problem is to improve the quality of general education, adding that higher education in Africa has undergone major restructuring in recent years, the institutional effects of which are still being felt.
"New organisational arrangements, quality assurance procedures, financing processes, and new relationships between the state and the institutions have called for new responses and adjustments by the key stakeholders involved," she said.
The minister said it has also been a time of expansion in the number of students throughout the African Commonwealth.
"Expansion required an expansion of funding. Yet state funding of higher education has been in decline until comparatively recently," she said.-
