Uganda

Please provide us with your views on the state of youth (un)employment in your country, and how it affects your country's state of peace?

Over 70% of Uganda’s population is below 30 years of age of which a majority are unemployed. This explains the poor living conditions and highly growing levels of stricken poverty. Due to the strain of unemployment frustrations, the youth have resorted to criminal acts of violence, increased thefts and deaths of people. In rural areas, the young girls are traded off in exchange for money or property as bride price. To maintain peace and security, the state invests more in defence and security rather than in expanding sectors that support economic opportunities for unemployed youth. The solution is to creating and supporting entrepreneurship among young people. Besides creating employment, entrepreneurship solves other social challenges such as corruption, lowers the crime rate, promotes women empowerment and increases economic activity.

How does your work and/or activism promote youth employment and/or sustainable peace?

Through Namirembe sweater makers, I currently employ 25 youth and have trained over 80 youth every year in the skills of knitting, sewing, and entrepreneurship. I have provided training to youth groups, with the most recent one conducted among girls in the disadvantaged rural areas of the Karamoja region in Uganda. This region receives one rainy season per year, making it impossible for them to totally rely on agriculture. The parents resort to marrying off their daughters as early as 14 years to very old men in exchange for little money as bride price. After a needs assessment with people from this community, we found that training the youth, especially girls, to learn hands-on skills would be the perfect solution. In November 2017 we managed to train the first cohort of 12 girls and provided them with machines as a starting point for their entrepreneurship journey.