Charles Kenny's blog post on the lack of opportunities for youth in the Middle East was posted on The Guardian's Development Network .
From the Article:
The firestorm of events across the Middle East over the past few days can't be explained by long-term development factors: the link between politics and economic development (or lack thereof) is complex in the extreme. Still, the staggering lack of opportunities for young people, especially young entrepreneurs without political connections, is clearly an important part of the mix. That includes people like Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old whose self-immolation sparked the protests which brought down Tunisia's president, and which in turn set off the remarkable events unfolding in Egypt.
The Middle East has witnessed an incredible expansion of both youth populations and education over the past 20 years. Fully two thirds of the region's population is below 24 years old. Tertiary enrollment in Egypt has climbed from 14-28% since 1990, and in Tunisia from 8-34%. Cairo University alone has around 200,000 students.
But while educational opportunities abound, jobs do not. Unemployment among 15-24 year olds in the Middle East and north Africa is the highest of any region in the world, averaging more than 25%. In Egypt in 2005 that number was 34%, in Tunisia it was 31%. One big reason is anaemic private sector growth. And behind weak private sector performance is exactly the kind of favouritism that drove Bouazizi to desperation.
Before coming to CGD, I worked in the Middle East and north Africa department of the World Bank for a year — not nearly long enough to become any kind of expert, but long enough to meet some. A report by some of my more seasoned colleagues looked at the region's private sector in some depth. It noted that while Egypt might have been one of the top 10 performers on the bank's own Doing Business reform measures in recent years and other countries in the region were also rising up the rankings, there was a big gap between de jure reforms and de facto implementation: "Firms in MENA are much older than in other parts of the world… Business managers are also older than elsewhere. Incumbent firms face less competition. Except in south Asia, fewer registered firms per capita are found in MENA… These are all symptoms of a discriminatory business environment that prevents the entry and exit of firms… the networks of privileges and the nexus between politics and business hurt the credibility of governments and reformers in particular. The perception that connections are an important source of competitiveness (some say the most important) discourages many would-be entrepreneurs… The large proportion of entrepreneurs… believe that rules and regulations will not be consistently and predictably applied [and] explains why policy reforms may not have a strong response from investors."