Young people with disabilities must shape policies that affect their lives

As the world celebrates International Youth Day on 12 August, this is an important time to emphasise the need to include and empower young people with disabilities.

With 70% of Africa’s population under the age of 30, 51.9% of young people with disabilities are not in education, employment and training compared to 27.1% of young people without disabilities. Far too often, they are excluded from meaningfully participating in, contributing to, and benefiting from, their local economies. This is especially the case for young women with disabilities and those who live in rural communities.

About two decades ago, my life suddenly turned around when I lost my eyesight and joined the disability community. I lost my job because my employer felt that I could no longer be productive to the organisation. Several other organisations told me they would like to hire me, but that they lacked the culture and capacity to work with a person with disability. I attempted to start my own business but raising startup capital was a challenge. I found it difficult to access new skills due to a lack of accessible learning centres or facilitators delivering inclusive teaching.

But I overcame many of these challenges through attending a training centre for blind people, undertaking personal coaching, and being mentored by an HR professional to became active in the labour market. I am now helping to find and deliver solutions to economically empower other young people both with and without disabilities.

Across several African countries, young people with disabilities are disproportionately underrepresented in the labour market. Data from the International Labor Organization’s labour force survey statistics reveals the gap between young people with and without disabilities in the proportion of youth who are not in education, employment or training: 26% to 20% in Ghana; 63% to 21% in Nigeria; 12.4% to 14% in Kenya; 52% to 27% in Tanzania; 78% to 33% in Senegal; and 17% to 15% in Uganda.

The contributing factors to these gaps include:

• inequalities in access to skills, education and finance
• misconceptions about disability leading to stigma
• the prohibitive cost of reasonable accommodation including assistive devices
• limited awareness of disability inclusive practices among employers and financial service providers on disability inclusion
• most importantly, poor implementation of disability rights legislation.

At Sightsavers, we acknowledge these challenges. We know we can’t solve this alone, which is why we’ve adopted a multi-stakeholder labour market strengthening approach. We design our programmes in close collaboration with organisations of people with disabilities, young people with disabilities and employers, and work in partnership with governments and other labour market actors.

Through Futuremakers by Standard Chartered, we’re supporting thousands of young people with disabilities in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Ghana and Pakistan to access employability and entrepreneurial skills. One of the success stories from this project is Maryanne in Kenya, who is excelling in her career and supporting other young people with disabilities using her IT skills.

With the global acceleration in digital transformation, we know that employers who are committed to inclusion are interested in hiring young people with disabilities with the relevant digital skills. This is why we set up the IT Bridge Academy for young people with disabilities in Kenya and Nigeria. Hundreds of students have graduated from these academies with their cyber security certification and developed other IT skills such as data analytics and product management.

In Zambia and Pakistan, through our innovation challenge, young people with disabilities have designed innovative business solutions to address climatic and socio-economic challenges in their communities. Many of them have started their own businesses and are hiring other people in their communities, including young people with disabilities, reducing unemployment.

Author

Rasak Adekoya is Sightsavers’ technical adviser for economic empowerment.