These businesses relied on extracting timber and sand supplies from the villages. Those in brickmaking used a portion of a parent’s land. In addition to generating income, youth gained life skills for peer training and learning, employment and improved social welfare. Educated youth recruited and trained fellow youth to work in same IGA, as one participant noted:
I do train new boys and girls who join our group; they come here voluntarily, acquire skills, and when they feel they are equipped with skills and knowledge, some decide to remain here, while others go to take up private work. The biggest challenge we have is timber supply. We get it from the community. Sometimes during wet season or restrictions on tree cutting, the supply goes down and youth here may remain redundant (Youth project manager, Pece division, Gulu City).
As the above statement shows, skills’ training is not enough. Projects depended on local resources for entrepreneurial survival. Very few groups dealt in carpentry and joinery, due to the huge start-up capital required, skills needed and nature of the market. The few engaged in brickmaking utilised family land or had to rent space for operation. Some family members never allowed youth from other families to utilise their clan’s land, thus affecting group cohesion, commitment, and achievement of set targets.
Retailing enterprises
This kind of trading business indirectly depended on land as a resource but mostly exploited youth themselves as ‘resources’. Our findings indicate that small-scale retailing enterprises were also prevalent among youth. Surprisingly, trading was reported more in rural than urban settings. The business venture involved purchasing manufactured/industrial goods such as soap, sugar, stationery, maize flour and general merchandise for resale. Other than manufactured goods, some youth in the municipality stocked charcoal near kiosks as ‘side businesses’, what is commonly regarded as ‘side hustling’ (Mwaura 2017). The venture necessitated energy, synergy and skills in accounting, record keeping, customer care, resilience, and character. Youth used part of the proceeds from the retail activities to buy produce during harvesting season. They expressed that retailing ventures generated quick and daily revenue compared to agriculture and manufacturing. The participants further contended that prices of merchandise were more stable than agricultural products’ prices.
We started this shop because our cash was idle for some time as we wait for harvest, so we decided to operate a retail shop, so we keep the money in use, and we are able to get what to pay back. Then, during harvest, we pick money from the shop to buy produce (Enterprise Chairperson Palaro Subcounty).
These youth found produce trading to be intermittent since it is seasonal. So, they took the initiative to start a shop that could generate income more continuously.