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Africans Need Not Apply

By Omar Farah

 MELBOURNE - Many Horn of African people are struggling to find work in the jobs they were trained for despite job vacancies.

The local community believes the reason for this is not a question of their suitability; rather it is the colour of their skin and a socially irresponsible media who are preventing them for securing the jobs they have been trained to do.
 
A diverse group, the Horn of Africa community includes the Somalian, Ethiopian, Sudanese, Djiboutian and Eritrean communities. From 1990s onwards a sizable number of Africans, mainly from Horn of Africa, were arriving in Australia.
Many were refugees, desperate to leave the civil unrest and structural fragmentation of their war torn homelands and start a new life.
 
According to the 2006 census of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) there are 31,000 Horn of Africans in Australia. These communities have a comparatively younger demographic – and it is the younger members of the community in particular who are enjoying the new opportunities that Australia has to offer them, including political stability, a safe environment, free health care and education opportunities. 
 
In particular, the communities’ young offspring are catching up with the Australian social and education system. They are enrolling from primary to high school, and are mastering the language of their new land and its customs.
 
Others have graduated from local universities, including Monash, Melbourne, La Trobe, RMIT and other universities all over the country, obtaining Diplomas, degrees, Masters and PhDs in different disciplines.
 
The community does have its success stories. Some are working in highly paid and highly respected positions, in a wide variety of careers - everything from Banking to the Defence industry, but, unfortunately these are exceptions.
 
Statistically the communities’ level of unemployment is very high despite their training and the availability of the jobs that they are applying for.
 
The 2006 census shows that in Victoria, the Sudanese’s unemployment rate is 38.2 percent compared to 5.4 percent Victorian wide. Similarly, in the same census, it shows that Somalia’s unemployment rate is 32.2 percent, followed by Eritreans and Ethiopians that are 19.9 per cent and 17 per cent respectively.
 
This raises the question as to why Horn of Africans are having difficulties finding employment, when they are educated and trained? Clearly it is not because of a lack of qualifications, residential status or because of the absence of employment opportunities.
 
When the community was new and emerging, obstacles included the issue of overseas qualifications and how they often didn’t match Australian requirements. Now the communities’ local graduates are facing yet another obstacle – a lack of experience. Many unemployed local graduates have accountancy and IT qualifications – two professions which are experiencing a desperate shortage of qualified workers.
 
As reported in The Age, the Australian Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Mr Lindsay Tanner, spoke at length about this issue at the 2008 Redmond Barry Lecture at the State Library.
 
The Minister said “I am now encountering African-Australians with high-level qualifications from Australian universities who can't find jobs … Their degrees are from Melbourne, not Mogadishu, but they're finding it just as hard to find employment."
 
Furthermore, some African job seekers, who were called for interview, have claimed that they were told, after a strange and bizarre reception and with no formal interview, that they would be contacted later. But were never called back.
 
Mr Abdiwahid Hassan, a lecturer of finance in the School of Accounting and Finance from Victoria University said several issues were preventing the community from securing professional positions.
 
He said: “The main obstacles that the community face when trying to get a job in the profession they have been trained for is actually the absence of strong networking and mentoring”.
 
He added: “Some qualified people have the tendency to pick up the easily available jobs rather than persevering to find the jobs that they were trained for”.  
 
However, Farah Jama, a job seeker, who has a Master in Accountancy from Monash University said he believed some employers were hesitant to employ Africans purely because they have never worked with Africans before.
 
He said: “Often the only idea they have about a new applicant is what was happening in some parts of the continent and are not properly assessing what the new applicant is capable to do here in Australia.”
 
Adding to the communities’ problems is an unsympathetic and often inflammatory local press.
Some members of the community are openly critical about the mainstream media, whom they believe do not fully understand or appreciate the difficulties of the settlement process, and are often quick to report the community’s perceived shortcomings. Bad press could undoubtedly have an impact on potential employer’s willingness to hire people from this community.
 
The first Australian-born of Horn of African background are just finishing high school. Born and raised in Australia, these young people hardly know anything else but Australia, consider themselves to be Australians (with a Horn of Africa background) and have fully adopted the Australian way of life, taking on very little of their parent’s culture.
 
That so many teenagers from this community consider themselves to be wholeheartedly Australian, contradicts the Herald-Sun’s distortion of facts and statistics which repeatedly infer that many Africans living in Victoria are refugees with criminal records.
 
For example Mr. Liam Houlihan said in his article Fears our crime being imported (Herald Sun, March 09, 2008),that: “an analysis of the police statistics and 2006 Census figures shows on average one in nine Victorians born in Somalia committed crime in the State last years”. This analysis was disputed and proven to be incorrect by ABC TV’s Media Watch program on the 24 of March 2008.
 
According to Media Watch, the Police record did not say committed crimes, but it instead is uses the phrase alleged offenders. Also, it did not specify the number of offenders but the number of cases that the police have processed.  
 
Obviously, a few of the younger members of the community will have problems with the law, but this is neither surprising nor unique to the Horn of African community. However, how the issue is explained and identified by the media, is.
 
When a teenager with African background commits a crime, the crime is committed by Africans – and the whole community is being judged. However, one may argue that the majority of the Australian public is unlikely to judge the Africans in that way. As reported recently by ABC radio, (World wants Obama as President,) sixty two percent of the Australian public wanted Barack Obama to become the American president. That would not be the case should they consider colour and one’s origin.
 
From September 11, 2001, Horn of Africans, particularly the Somali community, were high on Victoria’s print media radar, who regularly printed news reports that asserted some Somalis may have links with terrorist organization.
 
The Australian reporter Richard Kerbaz has extensively written on this issue in a tone that the community perceived to be a pure incrimination of the community. One of his articles included, Jihadis use foreign phone networks on February 23, 2008. However, thanks to the Australian justice system this news report was no more than media hype and no one has been charged as a result.
 
However, in this context, a Somali journalist, Mr. Issa Farah from SBS who is based in Melbourne has defended the media’s role and anyone else who may have played a role in this matter. He also went on to criticize some members of the Somali community.
 
Issa said: “There is a strong rumour that the Somalia’s alleged role of terrorist related stories has been circulated and exaggerated by some members of the Somali community.
 
He added: “This was intended to incriminate or defame their perceived-opponents and seek closeness to the authority - a practice that used to be acceptable and profitable back home. However, the media in question did not apply rationale but pursued a policy of creating sensalization”.
 
Nevertheless, regardless of their colour, creed or cultural background these peoples in question are Australian. Their failure as well as their success is ours. We will enjoy for their achievement and will suffer for their loss. Therefore, we, from layman to lawmaker, should give them a “fair go”.
 
Omar Farah (MA international Development)
Project officer
Horn-Afrik Employment, Training and Advocacy project
 
 
Here you can access the Media Watch response to the Heraldsun on 24 of March 2008. 

www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s2197803.htm