Youth Schemes in Uganda
Government youth schemes are crucial for youth entrepreneurship and development. They provide material, financial, and training assistance to the youth to utilise resources (Kristensen and Birch-Thomsen 2013:176). In addition to YLP, the notable schemes in Uganda include Youth Opportunities Programme (YOP) under NUSAF 2006, Youth Venture Capital Fund (YVCF) (Ahaibwe et al. 2015), Emyooga, Uganda Women Entrepreneurship Programme (UWEP), and Parish Development Model (PDM). Those specific to youth were YLP, YVCF, and YOP among others. The schemes target youth aged 16-35 and 18-30 years. The age definitions depend on the local terms, project rationale and government intentions. In 2006, Government of Uganda introduced a new component under NUSAF called YOP (Blattman, Fiala, & Martinez 2012:6). The schemes provided cash transfers to the youth groups as startups, for vocational training and tools for craft. The programme aimed to increase youth incomes, improve community reconciliation and reduce conflict in northern Uganda. The unconditional cash investments increased return on investment and social cohesion in post-conflict northern Uganda. Blattman et al. (2012:3) argue that inexperience, lack of education, and access to market information limited the success of scheme. Yet this programme was successful enough that it provided lessons for the implementation of other schemes (Bukenya et al. 2019:8). The lessons were incorporated in formulating specific youth entrepreneurship programmes.
Furthermore, YVCF worth UGX 25 bn (about US $ 10 million) was introduced in 2011 as one of the solutions to youth employment. Individual youth acquired credit for start-up channelled through commercial banks and then refunded the money. However, the collateral security as a requirement and lack of information hindered most poor and rural youth from accessing the funds. Educated and urban youth took advantage of the scheme at the expense of rural and illiterate ones (Ahaibwe et al., 2013:13). This necessitated introduction of another youth scheme which focused on interested groups, that is YLP. In 2013, the GoU boosted youth schemes by allocating UGX 25bn (about US $ 100 million) to YLP over a period of five years. The major pillars of the initiatives included enterprise development, job creation, and business training and development. The main objective was to empower the targeted youth to harness their business ideas, thus realising social and economic potential, and increasing self-employment and income. These active labour market programmes targeted mainly the poor, unemployed and unskilled and semi-skilled youth. Most of the schemes encourage youth participation in agriculture-related income generating activities. In most of the initiatives, educated youth take the lead in organising, guidance and holding positions in finance, chairing, and decision making. Most uneducated youth wish to identify with educated ones; thus being educated is key to income generating activities (Jones 2020:4). However, the youth portray agriculture as a side hustle and continue to ‘tarmack’, that is walk the streets of town looking for other jobs (Maura 2017:58). This attitude towards agriculture-related activities affected the productivity and success of most youth funded enterprises.
Studies postulate these schemes as channels of patronage and co-optation by the state. Macdonald et al. (2023:288) view youth livelihood programmes as targeted economic incentives that purport to promote a ‘culture of self-employment’ through microfinance, while serving as a vehicle for party-based handouts during election periods and as ‘gifts’. They are offered before, during, or after election cycles as a way of luring and attracting the constituencies to the regime (see Chemutai, this issue). Trying to become a beneficiary in youth schemes involves politics, connections and paying allegiance to the ruling party.