A dangerous failure to address the Arab world’s growing problems of inadequate education and increasing employment was highlighted in the 2017 Arab Youth Survey launched on Tuesday, which found that more than 65 per cent of young Arabs did not think that their education prepared them for the jobs of the future. The exception was the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), where 80 per cent were happy that they were getting the right training for their future, which was a significant contributor to the survey’s report of high optimism from GCC youth.
But it is a matter of concern that 74 per cent of young people from countries in the Arab Levant thought that their governments did not have the right polices to address the concerns of young Arabs. This matters because these countries contain large populations of Arabs, where 60 per cent are under 30 years old and will share this survey’s worrying conclusion. It is inevitable that 200 million young Arabs who are under 30 years will get increasingly frustrated as they struggle with an old-fashioned education system that teaches out-of-date facts by rote, and they will not find work in the fast-moving businesses of the future that are looking for independently-minded thinkers.
This frustration is likely to be a cause for political unrest, particularly in highly populated countries like Egypt where the survey showed only 37 per cent of young people had confidence in their government’s ability to deal with unemployment, or Lebanon (19 per cent) or Iraq (25 per cent). It is more worrying that the survey has highlighted this issue for many years, with very little progress observed by the young people whom it addresses.
