Contribution of youth development fund in creating youth employment opportunities in Kilosa district, Tanzania
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Date
2022
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Sokoine University of Agriculture
Abstract
Youth unemployment is a worldwide challenge. Tanzania is among the Sub-Saharan
African countries which face the problem of unemployment. Lack of capital to venture in
informal income generating activities is among the causes of youth unemployment. Youth
Development Fund (YDF) was introduced in Tanzania with the aim of reducing youth
unemployment through providing soft loans to youth. This study aimed at investigating
how YDF contributed to the performance of youth IGAs and employment creation. The
specific objectives were: i) To assess loan utilization practices and the types of youth
enterprises/ investments after accessing loans from YDF, ii) To assess the non-financial
support services and youth economic activities performance and iii) To examine the youth
who managed to employ themselves or employ others as a result of YDF.
A cross-sectional study was conducted. A survey was used to collect data from 100
respondents. The study held 10 focus group discussions and 6 key informant interviews.
Inferential and descriptive statistics were analysed through IBM-SPSS and STATA
software. Association between YDF and youth employment creation was determined
through a multiple linear regression model which was run using STATA. Content analysis
was used in the analysis of qualitative data. Findings indicate that 89% of the respondents
managed to employ themselves and employ others while 11% managed to employ
themselves. Age of respondents, amount of capital invested, business experience had
significant influence on youth employment at P ≤ 0.05 level while marital status, income
generated per year had significant influence at P ≤ 0.01 level on employment creation.
Loan from YDF was utilized for establishment of new businesses (59%) while the income
generating activities mentioned were agriculture and livestock keeping (50.8%), transporyouth were training and business linkages. The study concludes that YDF loan has
positive contribution towards employment creation in terms of self-employment to youth
and other youth in the established business enterprises. Therefore, it is recommended that
the Ministry of Labour, Youth, Employment, and Persons with Disability in Tanzania
should strengthen youth support through YDF loan and other non-financial support
services. Also, the programme should continue with coaching and monitoring of YDF
beneficiaries so as to improve business performance hence a reduction in youth
unemployment.t
(16.7%) and petty business (32.6%). The non-financial support services provided to the
Description
Dissertation
Keywords
Youth development fund, Employment opportunities, Kilosa district, Tanzania