Youth Friendly Centers in Rwanda are regarded as vehicles of promoting youth entrepreneurial development and fight against youth unemployment.
Like other young women who aspire to live a successful life, Mutoni dreamed of a brighter future from an early age. However, her dreams seemed to be broken by early pregnancy nearly at the age of 18, when she was in year two of secondary school.
Today, at the age of 23, Mutoni (second names not mentioned to protect her) ’s life presents a different story of resilience and empowerment, thanks to the youth community center in Bugesera District, Nyamata sector which will offer a variety of activities focusing on skills training.
Having frequented the center, Christine was supported to acquire a five-month vocational skills training in the arts of clothing production (tailoring program).
The mother of one is one of 106 youth have benefited from training at the center.
“This center provided me with valuable skills that shaped my destiny. I seized this opportunity to join the to gain knowledge of clothing production,”
“Today, I have hope for a better life. I can cater for all the basic needs, including health insurance, and future saving for my child. I witness that an empowered woman can break down obstacles to plan her own course,” she notes.
This center is aimed at increasing formal youth employment opportunities, enhancing self-employment capacity, and developing youth employment readiness skills.
Mutoni’s basic vocational skills also enabled her to venture into the shoe-making business. She works in a workshop (Agakiriro), based in Nyamata, where she makes clothes and shoes, earning her more than Rwf 100,000 per month, as she testifies.
Many youth frequent Youth Centers to undergo vocational training, acquire knowledge about employment and revenue generation, while others go there for talent detection and development.
According to government, youth centres are youth converging points that work under the patronage of the district authorities with an overarching goal of promoting youth development and ensuring their effective participation in the country’s development process.
However, according to a positional paper developed by Rwanda Civil Society Platform (RCSP) and Duhozanye Organisation, youth centers have hard limited contributions to youth development and unemployment is still relatively high regardless of the policies and strategies that are put in place to stifle youth unemployment.
Youth centers are still mainly facing different challenges including poor infrastructure, limited staffing, and limited financial support that need to be addressed for proper functioning in the future.
“In Rwanda, youth unemployment is relatively high at 25.6% among youth population aged 16-30 years as compared to the adults (aged 31 years and above) which is at 17.1%,” reads part of the paper. Adding that “the youth unemployment patterns in Rwanda show that 12.2% of unemployed youth have no education, 39.4% have achieved secondary education while 32.4%. are university graduates.”
In the paper, civil society organisations note that the main challenges of youth entrepreneurial initiatives and access to employment are lack of adequate skills, limited resources specifically financial means which put at risk the destiny of the youth.
“The government of Rwanda has understood the role of youth and has put forward quite number of initiatives so as to address the challenges of the youth through different youth strategies and policies. It is in this spirit that Youth Centers were created besides other valuable initiatives such as Agaciro Kanjye, National Youth Connekt,” the paper noted.
Zacharie Ndayishimiye the Project Manager at Rwanda Civil Society Platform says the government’s intention of setting up youth centers was an excellent idea but however they are faced with challenges which have hindered their operations.
He explains that these centers were set up to help youth mobilization on civic education, sports, entertainment and talent detection, entrepreneurship and economic empowerment services, vocational trainings, ICT, and Health programs.
“All of these programs constitute minimum package to be delivered throughout each center but this has not been the case as the number of youth centers is low compared to the youth population while those that are available face low turn up as they are understaffed and lack support which has led them not to operate at full capacity,” Ndayishimiye said.
However, the civil society paper says the fruits of the government policies are yet to be reaped suggesting a number of recommendations if anything tangible is to be gained.
The recommendations include strengthening institutionally and financially youth centers, work with Rwanda Technical Vocational Training Board to ascertain the quality programs delivered in these centers, close collaboration with Business Development Fund, the Ministry of Youth provide enough budget, provision of tool kits to trainees,a strong and regular monitoring and evaluation of policies among others.
These will help address limited capacity of Youth friendly centers and Ineffective implementation of youth policies.
