Targeted interventions do work for youth employment

Many youth employment interventions in Eastern and Southern Africa have recorded some successes through job creation and the establishment of promising enterprises. East Africa in particular, has shown that collaborative projects such as the Youth Employment Facility in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania had worked effectively. These have created direct and indirect beneficiaries for surrounding communities when it becomes necessary to engage external support. In Tanzania for example, figures based on the Start and Improve Your Business (SIYB) sub regional assessment report 2014 covering 2010-2015, the Kazi Nje Nje project recorded many successes. It benefitted 378 trainers, 30,000 youth, 20 per cent of the trained have had access to external finance, 17,000 new businesses were established and of the existing enterprises, jobs have been created at a ratio of 2.4 per enterprise.

Another good example is the Youth to Youth Fund of Uganda. Out of the 514 youth trained during pilot phase from 15 districts, 149 were sampled to assess the short term impact of the training. Before exposure to training under the Fund, their turnover was approximately US$145 but grew to US$250, which translates to a 72% increase. Their savings, on the other hand averaged US$16 but grew to US$35 – an increase of over 101%.

Whilst many examples bemoaned failure by many youths to pay back borrowed funds, the Business Development Fund (BDF) established in Rwanda painted a different story which showcased how, through creating the correct synergies, a programme can yield high performance results. The BDF has been set up as a credit guarantee scheme specifically for youths which works thus: armed with a business plan, a youth approaches a bank for a loan; then deposits some collateral with the BDF and the BDF writes to the bank guaranteeing the loan the youth will have applied for. The end results are that both the bank and the youth are protected, with no possibility of the youth reneging on repayments because the BDF will use the collateral to pay the bank!

It came as no surprise that most of the programmes registered similar challenges such as youths’ unjustified mentality of entitlement to resources, lack of legal framework to adequately protect youth, limited availability and accessibility to financial institutions and age related exclusion.

The overall messages coming across were that with the correct mix of targeted training, using the correct selection criteria of interested youths, well- funded interventions do bring youth out of unemployment and poverty, as demonstrated by the example from Rwanda.