ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a comprehensive review of youth employment policies and empirical studies aimed at accelerating efforts to create dignified and fulfilling work opportunities for youth. The study uses a mixed research methods approach, utilising desk review, focus group discussions (FGDs), and key informant interviews (KIIs) both at the national and subnational levels. The findings show that the youth continue to face difficulties in fund management, monitoring, and standardisation/certification of the youth training/skilling programmes. As an illustration, the recovery rate for youth livelihood programme (YLP) funds is only 26% while about 60% of the interviewed youth reported that their certificates from the skilling centres lacked international certification. These challenges continue to impact the effectiveness and efficiency of these youth employment initiatives and programmes. Key programme-related gaps identified include continued poor coordination of youth employment programmes (YEPs), inefficient monitoring and evaluation, inadequate preparation of beneficiaries, and continued failure to adhere to the programme selection criteria. The findings highlight that the situation of YEPs implementation has stalled, showing little progress since 2021, hence the need for reinvigorated monitoring and follow-up of the beneficiaries, standardisation of training programmes, and more investment in demand-led YEPs.
