The Swapo Party Youth League (SPYL) has established a research desk to review the effectiveness of youth empowerment policies.

SPYL's Secretary for Information and Mobilization, Moses Shikerete, made the announcement at Rundu.

Shikerere says the SPYL is concerned with the slow implementation of programs and policies aimed at youth empowerment.

However, the issue remains the slow pace of implementation and lack of monitoring and evaluation. A lot of people in our country say Namibia has very good policies; our problem is just implementation. What we are saying is that this time around, as with the resolutions taken at the 7th Congress of the Swapo Party, the fast-tracking of implementation means that people that are entrusted with responsibilities are going to be checked regularly to see to it that we implement all those resolutions at the government level so that we can reduce the youth unemployment percentage that has skyrocketed in recent years."

Shikerete was not happy that the non-collateral loans and internship schemes, as well as the buy local strategy, have not had the desired effect on youth unemployment.

He also called for the strengthening of the Industrialization and Trade Ministry's Equipment Aid Scheme for young people engaged in entrepreneurial development, thereby creating jobs for themselves.

"We call for the implementation of a coordinated policy framework, administrative coordination, and financial consolidation of the youth programs, whereby there's a lack of an appropriate institutional framework to ensure that all youth unemployment initiatives are targeted, time-bound financed, properly coordinated, monitored, and evaluated in a comprehensive manner so that they can reach the target."

Sport and arts development, Sikerete says, are other areas that hold the potential to employ a large number of young people.

"Ours is not only rhetoric and empty promises, but we have extensively deliberated at the highest level on the most urgent and challenging issues faced by our young people, who make up 60% of our population."

He says the research and monitoring desk will help the SPYL keep track of events and take decisive action where implementation has failed.