Natural resource governance and conservation intiatives: The hidden oppurtunity to address youth unemployment in sothern Africa?

There is a growing concern over unemployment of the youth and the establishment of an environment that stimulates the creaion of jobs. The youth demographic is viewed as human capital that can assist in building the economy and as such should be “kept safe, developed and deployed” (Ayele et al, 2017: 2). As such, the challenge of unemployment within sub-Saharan Africa (6% youth unemployment rate according to the AfDB) is regarded as a crisis as this demographic consists of 60% of the unemployment rate on the continent. This study contends that the unemployment crisis can be tackled within the natural resource governance sector, where the role of the youth as human capital is underutilized. Zurba and Trimble (2014: 79) argue that there is a gap that exists between youth engagement and natural resource governance because “resource management is inter-generationally blind”. This, therefore, supports the premise that conservation as a tool or instrument to preserve and govern natural resource-use, favors specific stakeholder elites, tourism and the goals set out for conservation where specific actors have access to decision-making platforms whilst others do not. Therefore, in an effort to create a collaborative environment between state actors like national parks or private game reserve owners or NGO’s (Non-Governmental Organization) and the youth, this study aims to create a platform to bridge the gap highlighted by Zerba and Trimble (2014) in the African context