A team of researchers from the College of Education and External Studies (CEES) is set to train ghetto youth and equip them with entrepreneurial skills as well as give them seed capital for their businesses.
The team, led by Dr. Badru Musisi, has embarked on a stakeholder engagement with the ghetto youth, youth organizations, the Police, the Ministry of Kampala Capital City and Metropolitan Affairs among others to carry out a needs assessment before undertaking the study.
The project, titled Kampala Ghetto Youth Training for Entrepreneurial Promotion (KGYTEP) seeks to offer an opportunity of self-employment to the youths.
Speaking during the stakeholder engagement recently, the Minister for Kampala Capital City and Metropolitan Affairs, Hon. Minsa Kabanda, said the ghettos have three categories of youth, the educated but unemployed, the school dropouts and the criminals, who each require different interventions. Some need orientation and training while others require rehabilitation.
She said many youths in the ghetto had never got an opportunity to be employed and therefore was pleased to learn that Makerere University had embarked on a project to help them.
The youth in Uganda make up 70% of the population but more than half of these are unemployed, which has forced them to move into slums. The Minister said she had worked with the youth in Kampala and was confident that the ghetto youth want to improve their livelihoods and was therefore positive that this project would be supported.
She requested KCCA to undertake a census and registration of the youth in the slum areas of Kampala. She also called for the establishment of industrial parks and training centres, which should offer mindset change to the youth. She pledged support of the ministry during the execution of the project.
The Principal of CEES, Prof. Fred Masagazi Masaazi thanked the government for the financial support to Makerere University through the Research and Innovations Fund (Mak-RIF) and he also pledged the college’s willingness to work with the different stakeholders to uplift the lives of the ghetto youth. The Principal congratulated Dr. Musisi and the research team upon winning the grant.
It is estimated that more than half of the youth population is unemployed. This high rate of unemployment has driven the youth into crime and slum areas. It is this unemployment that the project seeks to address. The problem of unemployment creates a social, economic, political and security danger to the county.
The project seeks to offer scalable and sustainable training of the ghetto youth in the five divisions of Kampala using a model called STEP – Student Training for Entrepreneurial Promotion because it is evidence based and scientifically evaluated.
STEP is a strategic and Innovative skilling program designed to combat youth unemployment in developing countries. The goal of the training is to develop youths’ skills to pursue an entrepreneurial career as a viable employment option by changing their mindset to consider self-employment as an alternative career option, increase business start-up rate to boost the number of ghetto youth venture and produce more job creators.
You must be logged in to post a comment.