Local Economic Development (LED) and Youth Employment in Musanze District (2014-2017).

Abstract

The problem of youth unemployment is a global problem. Youth unemployment in Africa is believed to have reached crisis levels. In Rwanda, the overall unemployment rate stood at 17.8 percent (NISR- LFS – August 2017). Among the youth from 16 to 30 years, the unemployment stands at 21.7 percent, while it is 14.6 percent for adults. In Musanze district, current data showed that the unemployment rate stood at 15.5%. To deal with the issue of unemployment and youth unemployment in particular, different strategies were elaborated and implemented. Local Economic Development (LED) was among those strategies. A qualitative study was conducted in Nkotsi and Muhoza sectors of Musanze district to evaluate the contribution of LED to youth employment. The target population was the youth (16-30 years) in Musanze district. But, through purposive sampling, members of National Youth Council at sector and district levels were selected for focused group discussions. Also, purposive sampling helped to select key informants for interviews. The findings showed that from 2014/2015 to 2017/2018 LED projects contributed to create 28,000 jobs and 50% were for the youth. However, it was revealed by the respondents that these jobs are insufficient (drop of water in the ocean) compared with unemployed youth who seek for jobs. Comparing the rural sector of Nkotsi and urban sector of Muhoza, the findings showed that the youth in Muhoza benefited more from LED than the youth in Nkotsi sector. As far as limits of LED were concerned, the findings revealed that LED projects create at 90% manual and physical force demanding jobs among others. For LED to significantly and sustainably contribute to youth employment, the following strategies were proposed: increase LED budget and therefore, LED projects; infrastructure projects should not be concentrated in urban milieu, but also in remote and rural areas; LED should create jobs for all categories of youth (males/females; educated/uneducated; Normal/ disabled); services to promote youth employment should be decentralized to remote and rural sectors, but not concentrated in urban/towns.