Liberia, Aug. 12 -- Liberia's youth crisis is often described with the wrong number. The youth unemployment rate is put at about 2.3 percent (World Bank/ILO). On paper, this looks like a triumph, but in reality, it means the opposite. On the streets of Monrovia, Buchanan, Gbarnga, kakata, Ganta and Harper, it tells a very different story.

By Nuwoe Kellen - Thought Leader. Institution Builder. Human Development Enthusiast.

At least nine in ten working Liberian youth earn their living in the informal economy - selling in the traffic, washing cars in the streets, selling pepper cala and roasted corn, riding pen-pen and keh keh, hauling goods, farming small plots, hustling day to day, and doing whatever keeps them alive. They are working. B...