Ricardo Santos presents at UNICEF National Forum on Children and Adolescents

On 20 April, UNU-WIDER Research Fellow Ricardo Santos gave a presentation on the school-to-work transition of Mozambican youth at the UNICEF National Forum on Children and Adolescents.

Organized by UNICEF Mozambique and UN DESA in Maputo on 19-21 April, the forum, entitled ‘Prospects for the future in the current challenging context’ covered various topics ranging from policy implications of the impact of COVID-19 on children and families to climate change, resilience and sustainability. The speakers of the event included national and international representatives of academia, government, NGOs and businesses.

In his presentation, the challenges of school-to-work transition of Mozambican youth   ̶̶  insights from two surveys, Ricardo Santos described the main challenges faced by Mozambican youth in their transition to the labour market. The presentation, based on the insights from two recent surveys carried out under the IGM programme, Survey of school-to-work transition of university students and the Baseline survey on the school-to-work transition of technical and vocational education (TVET) graduates in Mozambique, synthesized and compared some of the key evidence from these two surveys.

According to the researcher, the results of both surveys show that the national labour market still faces challenges in absorbing youth graduating from higher education and technical and vocational education and training (TVET). In addition, he highlighted the need to increase access to information on job opportunities and the transparency of recruitment processes, as well as to invest in disseminating the different transition experiences. This, according to the researcher, would help future university and TVET students in making informed choices on careers and courses.