The contribution of public policy initiatives in addressing unemployment In Kampala
Abstract
The study looked at the contribution of public policy in addressing unemployment in Kampala located in the Central part of Uganda. The research was guided by four specific objectives; ascertaining what sort of entrepreneurial skills are being imparted on the youth under the scheme and how they contribute to youth employment and establishing the number of youth that are benefiting from the scheme. Further still, the study sought to examine the linkage of skills acquired towards self-employability and to evaluate the contribution of the scheme to the livelihood of youth. The study used a cross-sectional design. In terms of knowledge about YES program, the study findings reveal that 82% of the youth knew about the Scheme, 75.6% had personally participated and only 18% of the youth had never heard of the YES Scheme at all. Besides, youth that had participated in the YES Program, 90.8% had small business of their own and only 9.3% never had any business. In contrast, of the youth who had not participated in YES, 43.8% had small businesses of their own while 56.3% did not have any business. Results suggest that indeed the YES has had a major contribution to youths’ capital as many of its participants based on the reports from MDAs, have higher capital for their business compared to those who did not participate in the scheme. In regards to training information obtained showed that youth who participated in the YES program attained skills such as saving, mobilization of resources, bookkeeping, business development, and idea generation / entrepreneurship. In conclusion, this study has revealed that there is a link between the YES program and youth becoming self-employed as well as creating jobs for others. In view of the above, the study recommends that in order to benefit more from the scheme, there is a need for Government to emphasize vocational training in primary and secondary schools, enhance the YES component of market infrastructure development and business support services such as support network, mentoring, business clubs and incubators.