How to create 600000 jobs in 6 months in Afghanistan | Sanzar Kakar | TEDxDarulaman
Salam alaikum maybe you can dim the lights a little bit more so it's clear I'm gonna be talking to you today about how to create 600,000 jobs in Afghanistan in only six months when people think of Afghanistan and you ask them what's the biggest challenge what's the biggest problem most people will say security and after 40 years of war finally people have now realized that a military solution is not possible a political solution is currently under discussion we'll see how that goes but there's another solution that people have not thought about as much as I would like and that's an economic solution because if you take a map of Afghanistan and you try to see where there's insecurity you'll find that it matches with joblessness and with unemployed now some people will say that well first you need security and then that's why the jobs are coming to those places but I'd like to argue something else I would like to say that actually jobs bring security not the other way around because it's a fact that people with jobs are much less likely to join the insurgency and unfortunately right now we have about 40% of the Afghan population that are jobless and are looking for work so you can imagine what the screw situation is like because of it and then this situation is only getting worse every year for their 400,000 Afghans every year are joining the workforce and they're having trouble finding jobs so the big multi-million dollar question how do we employ not only these 400,000 Afghans that are joining the workforce to every year but an existing unemployed force so we need at least 600,000 Afghans to do it how do we do it so you can think about sectors what areas could potentially we target to to create jobs there's of course manufacturing but it's very hard to compete with China and manufacturing right there's AI T we can do IT services locally but in terms of as an export as a country it's very difficult to compete with India in the IT sector there's agriculture and yes we can provide high culture for the country and it represents a large percentage of our income but to compete on a global scale in agriculture is gonna be very difficult mining people have mentioned yes three trillion dollars of potential resources we have and it has a bright future but we have to face the facts that for a large number of mining jobs it's gonna take a long time many many years to build that infrastructure so what's left local goods and services we still have 36 million population they need goods and they need services and how do we provide that how do we encourage and promote an economy within the country and encourage that to go about so there are three things there's assets that are underutilized there are goods that we need to get to market and there's services that we need to get market we need to build a local economy that can grow and promote and keep being a cycle that will continuously expand so I'm gonna be talking about these three things today assets goods and services how do we encourage the local economy how do we encourage people to transact more and that will result in the jobs that we're looking for but how do we connect them if we're trying to connect buyers and sellers we need to find a mechanism a platform to connect them these 36 million people in Afghanistan about 78 percent of them have mobile phones 26 percent of them have access to the Internet and about 10 million or active social media users now not only that but this is expanding dramatically not only is the population expanding we have one of the youngest populations in the world at 2.3 percent growth every year what about subscriptions are also increasing but most importantly is internet usage year-on-year almost 150 percent we're expanding access to Internet now we have a need for but we need to tell them how to do that you have access to Internet what do you do with it how can you access it one of the ways is through apps now we need a nationwide campaign to explain to people how to use their phones to download certain apps to give them access to be able to advertise their own talents we will to advertise the goods they have for sale and for buyers to go to find them so that's the the platform that we need to look at both on the supply side for goods and services to people to list their app as well as on the demand side for users for you to be able to request those goods and services now number one assets there's about 700,000 unused vehicles in Afghanistan unused or underutilized is what I can 700,000 that means that you know people generally use vehicles to drive to work in the morning then they're at home or at work all day long and then they drive back home at the end of the day all day long their car is not being he was just sitting there standing still all night long is not being used so they have this asset an expensive asset that they're not taking advantage of right they're not putting it to good use and what we can do is have a mechanism a platform for people to be able to put that asset that they have to use have their friends or family for example use that car to generate a life of the hood and income for themselves so this is an example for putting an asset to use but not only that you can convince people not to buy cars in the first place because then they don't have to worry about fuel about maintenance about parking about the car getting lost damaged or stolen because if there's a service that they can instantly request transportation anywhere in the country go anywhere and not worry about anything that's one way to do it so here's another way to kind of explain how they agar perogative genefex see how much of the charm of kill me Chevy Mita 1:8 I bet I ran into Hopkin it [Music] [Applause] burnham I'm available Baraka melon dragon download Knut Robitaille online that was they fence in a way bomb over a moat a bikini who are my foods my money so that's how we get assets utilize so I said there were three things that was the first one the second one people need goods in their homes in their offices in camps all across the country they need to purchase goods and in the in the current model when you have these five million households in Afghanistan they are required to go and walk into a shop and the shopkeeper is limited to the customers that walk into the door right that's that's all of his customers whoever walks into the door of his shop but if there's a way that he can reach the entire country those entire 36 million people so he can say hey I have these goods for sale so you don't have to get in the car drive argue negotiate put it go back home you'd be able to access a much bigger market and it'd be much easier for sleeve other people when people do that however there's a number of niche areas that come into play in neighboring countries for example of female hygiene products where an area that boomed very quickly online because women were uncomfortable going to the market to buy these things in male-dominated stores but very carefully from this you know convenience of their own home they could order whatever they needed and it would be delivered to their home in a discreet package instantly or mother's ordering diapers or whatever might be there's so many options there that will make it easier for other people and allow people that have goods to offer to reach the entire population not just waiting for them to come into their door so we talked about assets now we talked about goods but the question is payment [Music] so not only through you don't have to worry about even cash you can get things done much faster by sending payment instruments a person doesn't have to worry when I bring something expensive to the house am I gonna get it paid or not what the price is gonna be later on you're gonna know right from the beginning if you want to buy it and you can make that payment right there into a wallet and we'll talk more about that wallet and how important that is for the local economy number three so assets goods now we're talk about services all right services is is the largest area right because we have about 13 million literate workers in Afghanistan right we have plumbers we have carpenters we have electricians we have laborers and we also have unskilled laborers we have beauticians they're all these people that have certain skills that they want to go to market but there's not a platform a way to do it if your pipe breaks in your bathroom right how do you know how to trust a good plumbing but if you have all the local plumbers being able to list that these are my services I would like to advertise it you can call an up right away to fix the issues that you have at 10 pay them right away of course they'll be picked up and dropped off by by publisher so they don't have to worry about transportation to where they're going and also you can rate them to say hey this plumber did a great job this electrician did a great job this beautician really knows what she's doing and other users will be able to see ranked and take advantage of that knowledge to be able to pick the best service spiders out there so with this method over three hundred thousand workers we can put to use across the country in this example a plumber was requested but again it's not just about paying your contractors and paying your vendors and goods you can pay anyone you can send money to your friends and family you can send money from abroad to Afghanistan instead of money going out of Afghanistan we could have ways to bring it into the country and have it utilized and circulated within the country itself [Music] so instead of people wasting their time waiting in lines at the bank to pay their bill or pick up their salary or transfer some money to somebody else they can do it all instantaneously what does that mean that means they have more time to be productive members of society in work and not wasting time on administrative items so we talked about three things what does that mean we want recirculation within the country we want people to be able to receive funds to their mobile wallets and then they're much more likely to be able to use that funds locally in Afghanistan because now that I have money received through my salary we're requesting all bank payments to go through there we're requesting all government employees to get their salary electronically we're requesting all foreigners and donors to pay through electronically once you have your money on your phone you'd be much more willing to use that money to pay a provider that would accept that instead of worrying about going to the ATM or want the bank to cash out you'd be much more willing to pay your bills online so the vendors that are registered they have an advantage they have advantage because they already can receive that and everyone else that has money on that I can use it as well thank you [Applause]