Unemployment and Youth Restiveness in Africa: Implications for Counselling

Abstract

Restiveness among youths has become one of the nagging global challenges. Consequently, its prevalence in Africa has become more worrisome now than ever before. This paper therefore examined unemployment and the incidences of youth restiveness in Africa: Implication for counseling. The paper adopted a qualitative approach relying mainly on secondary materials from documented evidences. Available data indicates persistent rise in the level of unemployment across different African countries. By the same token there have also been high incidences of restiveness among the youths in Africa within the same period. However, the paper brought to the fore specific instances of restiveness in select African countries namely; militancy and insurgency in Nigeria Niger Delta, xenophobic attacks in South Africa, socio-political crises in southern Cameroun, ethnic and religiously motivated restiveness in Mali and rising piracy and terrorism in Somalia as case studies. The paper identified poverty, unemployment, socio-economic and political inequality and marginalization as factors of youth restiveness. These factors no doubt are in high prevalence in Africa. Given the scenario, the implication for counseling is of great consequence as the concern revolves around how counselling services can be leveraged in the context so that the youths can be properly engaged to embrace genuine efforts towards self-development, skills acquisition, self-reliance and nation building. It is argued that the solution to unemployment and youth restiveness problems lie in part on counsellors constructive engagement with youths, on awareness creation through the media, education of the youth towards self-realization and on their pivotal roles in nation building.