Work and Rural Livelihoods: The Micro Dynamics of Africa’s ‘Youth Employment Crisis’

Abstract

While it is widely accepted that Africa is experiencing a youth employment crisis, the nature of the crisis is disputed. In relation to rural youth, the crisis is variously framed in term so unemployment, underemployment, missing jobs, a lack of decent work, waithood and mixed or diverse livelihoods; with each framing pointing toward a different response. We look more closely at how young people engage with the labour market using a small, high-frequency dataset that includes activities of 233 individuals aged 18–24 years in rural areas of Ghana and Uganda. Specifically, we describe four dimensions of their work (its nature, frequency, steadiness and amount), analyse relationships between these dimensions, and link them with characteristics of the study participants. We conclude that in the early phases of livelihood building non-domestic work activities of young people are multi-faceted, context and seasonally specific, and highly gendered. This reflects, in part, different priorities given to education, domestic work, childbearing and social relations relative to economic activities. This study highlights the need for a better understanding of the various factors—including individual priorities—that come into play in the early phases of livelihood building, and their implications for when and how young people engage with non-domestic work.

Youth Participation in Agriculture: A Scoping Review

“…This suggests that young people are fleeing from poverty and not farming per se. The majority of youths in SSA reside in rural areas, where labour productivity is low and employment opportunities are scarce [54]. With farming generating about 68% of rural income in Africa [55], youths are more likely to find employment in the informal sector or engage in self-employment to meet immediate basic needs [56].…”

Insights into smallholder capacity for agricultural commercialisation: Evidence from four African contexts

“…Higher capacity households are primarily headed by younger household heads, on average, in Ghana, Tanzania and Nigeria, but not in Zimbabwe; these differences are, however, statistically significant only in Tanzania and Nigeria. This result suggests youth and youth-led households being overrepresented in farming (Dolislager et al 2020;Carreras et al 2020;Mutabazi et al 2013). It may also reflect the involvement of youth in specific crops and crop related activities; and, potential income-and poverty 'penalties' (Arslan et al 2020) faced by younger lower capacity households.…”

Rural Employment in Africa: Trends and Challenges

“…Some countries in Southern and Northern Africa, including South Africa and Namibia, have particularly high youth unemployment rates but in most countries youth unemployment is low (Fox et al, 2016;Sumberg et al, 2021). Yet, there is substantial underemployment among Africa's rural youth (Bezu and Holden, 2014;Carreras et al, 2020;Fox et al, 2016). Elder and coauthors (2015) estimate, with data from eight African countries, that on average 7.5% of the youth labor force is unemployed and that more than one third of young rural workers works less than 20 hours per week.…”