adminSugar cane juice with a dash of ginger and lemon is a favourite thirst quencher in Maputo. It is sold along a stretch of the capital’s sea-facing Marginal promenade between the Maritimo and Naval clubs. Young men make this juice while standing and cranking old-fashioned machines. Sergio is reputed to sell the freshest sugar cane and the strongest ginger.
Sergio, who does not feel comfortable giving his last name, is 26, tall, smart and sociable. His ready smile reveals two rows of perfect teeth. He finished high school and has a talent for languages. Besides Portuguese and Shangaan, he speaks isiZulu, eMakhuwa (the most widely spoken language in Mozambique’s northern provinces) and basic English. He befriended some Zimbabweans and learnt Shona.
He would be an asset as a translator for a mining firm or as a guest-house receptionist. Instead, he whiles away his days-from 11am to 9pm six days a week-waiting for clients, earning $50 a month. What about a girlfriend? “Ha!”, he snorts. “Girls need airtime, braids and beer. Even the girls at church. I can’t afford one.”
He lives with his parents, and tries not to despair about his future. “My family is poor, we don’t have connections, it’s hard to find a job,” he says.
Sergio is in “waithood”, a prolonged period of suspension between childhood and adulthood. During this time, without education or a job, young people cannot achieve the social markers of adulthood-independence, a living wage, building a family and a home.
This phase can stretch for decades for poor youth, “a disenfranchised majority, largely excluded from major socio-economic institutions and political processes”, writes anthropologist Alzinda Honwana in “The Time of Youth: Work, Social Change and Politics in Africa”.
“Failed neo-liberal economic policies, bad governance and political instability have caused stable jobs to disappear,” she writes. “As this limbo becomes pervasive and prolonged, “waithood” in Africa becomes seemingly permanent, gradually replacing conventional adulthood.”
Mozambique’s high annual growth of 8% between 2001 and 2006 and 7% since then has not translated into substantial poverty reduction or job creation. More than half of its 25million population lives on less than $1,25 a day, according to the World Bank.
Youth unemployment and under- employment are widespread. In 2012, 330 000 youth entered the labour market, but only 280 000 jobs were created in Mozambique, including mining jobs in South Africa, according to a 2014 report by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Growth notwithstanding, Mozambique’s formal economy remains small and inefficient. It offers few jobs, 700 000 for a labour force of 11million in 2010, according to the International Labour Organisation. More than two-thirds of Mozambicans work in agriculture. But most jobs offer subsistence pay or none at all, especially for women, says a 2014 labour profile by the Danish Trade Union Council for International Development Cooperation. For instance, monthly salaries for forestry and farm workers are $92, according to Joseph Hanlon, a Mozambique expert. The artificial overvaluing of the Mozambican currency, the metical, to neighbour South Africa’s rand (one rand = three meticais) keeps South African food imports cheap. While this may prevent riots it undermines local agriculture, key to food security and rural livelihoods. Farmers who grow maize, tomatoes, potatoes and fruit cannot compete with these imports.
Most workers lack social protection. Just 13% of working-age Mozambicans earn a salary, more than half are self-employed and another quarter work at home without pay, according to the national statistics institute.
Just when Mozambique is at a crossroads-attracting huge investments in gas, coal, heavy sands and agri-business-the country can only offer “a vast supply of unskilled or very low-skilled workers”, says the USAID report.
One problem is the country’s failed education system. Among 15-24 year-olds, six out of ten have not completed primary school, according to the national statistics institute. Mozambique has the lowest average years of schooling in the world. More than half of primary school pupils drop out and just 20% enrol in high school. While access to primary education has expanded hugely, quality remains sub-standard.
At rural schools the reason is glaring: unqualified teachers, fresh out of high school, struggle to be heard by 80 kids in a stuff y mud-and-straw classroom or under a tree. In Maputo province alone, 45,000 students lacked desks and a classroom in 2013, reckoned Canal De Moçambique, a weekly newspaper.
Mercedes Sayagues is a freelance journalist who covers Angola and Mozambique for the Daily Maverick. She is the author of two studies on AIDS in Africa and one on gold mining in Mali.
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