Somali Job Market is a very hard place to navigate right now for the thousands of students who finish their degrees every year and find nothing but closed doors. It is a big problem because the young people study for four or five years and spend a lot of money but then they sit at the cafes with no work to do.
We see so many people with diplomas in things like social science or public relations but the actual companies in the city are looking for something else. This gap between what the students learn and what the bosses want is making life very difficult for the new generation. The Somali Job Market is simply not able to take in all these graduates because the economy is small and the skills are not matching what the offices need.
Why the Somali Job Market is full of graduates without work
The main reason why the Somali Job Market feels so crowded with unemployed youth is that most universities focus on theory rather than real skills. Students spend all their time reading old books and writing papers but they never learn how to fix a machine or manage a modern business system. When they go for an interview the manager asks if they can do the job and they realize they only know the definitions from the textbook.
This is why we have a huge number of people looking for office jobs while the technical jobs remain empty or are given to foreigners. The Somali Job Market needs people who can build things and solve practical problems but the schools are busy making more administrators.
Another issue is that everyone wants a degree just to have a title like doctor or engineer even if the market does not need them. There are way too many universities in Mogadishu and Hargeisa that keep opening the same easy courses because they are cheap to teach.
They don’t care if the Somali Job Market is already full of those people as long as the students pay the fees every semester. This creates a situation where we have a surplus of graduates in some fields and a total lack of experts in others like agriculture or energy. We need to stop thinking that a university degree is the only way to be successful in the Somali Job Market today.
Maybe it is time to talk about vocational training instead of just academic studies to help the Somali Job Market grow. If we had more schools for plumbing and electricity and nursing and coding the students would find jobs much faster after they finish. These are the skills that actually build a country and keep the economy moving forward every day. The Somali Job Market is crying out for technicians and skilled workers who can handle the infrastructure of a developing nation. But right now there is a stigma against manual work and everyone wants to sit behind a desk even if that desk does not exist.
If the government and the private schools started working together they could change the Somali Job Market for the better. They should look at what the big companies are hiring for and then change the lessons in the classrooms to match those needs. If a new factory is opening we should train people to work in that factory instead of just giving them a general business degree. This would make the transition from school to the Somali Job Market much smoother for everyone involved. It is a waste of human potential to have so many smart young people doing nothing when there is so much work to be done in our land.
Parents also have a role to play by encouraging their kids to learn trades that are in high demand in the Somali Job Market right now. It is better to be a successful mechanic with a good income than an unemployed manager with a piece of paper that nobody wants to see. We have to change the culture around education so that it is about getting a job and helping society not just getting a high status. The Somali Job Market will only improve when the people change their mindset about what kind of learning is valuable.
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In the end we need a big reform in the way we think about the future of our children and our country. The Somali Job Market is the mirror that shows us the failures of our current education system and we cannot ignore it any longer. We hope that the leaders will start investing more in technical colleges and apprenticeships so that the youth have a real chance. Only then will the Somali Job Market become a place of opportunity and growth for everyone who is willing to work hard. It is a long road but it is the only way to build a strong and independent nation where every graduate has a purpose.
