On January 24, 2014, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni launched the Ushs 265 billion Youth Livelihood Programme (YLP), aimed at empowering the youth and fighting unemployment among them at Kololo ceremonial grounds. The money is already on the ministry of gender, labour and social development’s account, the implementer of the programme and will be accessed by youth groups with good business proposals.
The funds will be disbursed directly from the district youth livelihoods programme account to the individual youth project accounts managed by the youth project management committees. Unlike the Youth Venture Capital Fund, the Youth Livelihood Programme Funds will be released on a revolving basis and will not attract interest when paid back in one year.
After one year, it will attract a five per cent charge to cater for inflation. It should be noted that in the 2012/13 financial year, government allocated Ushs 25 billion Venture Capital Fund to the youth, but its success is yet to be realized. Under this programme, the youth were to get the money through selected banks but many youth were unable to get the funds citing unfavourable bank conditions.
Museveni however said the money was supposed to be a revolving fund, moving from one youth group to another and not from the bank. He said this was confusion. The government has also initiated other good programmes in the past only to fail due to corruption and poor delivery mechanisms. For successful implementation of this new hyped programme, the government must draw lessons from bad experiences of the past failed programmes.
Given the fact that Uganda churns out over 400,000 graduates from universities and other higher institutions of learning annually, with only 9,000 able to get jobs and youth unemployment at 62%, its high time the country implemented programmes like the Youth Livelihood Programme and ‘Skilling Uganda’.
