Private Sector Engagement towards Increasing Youth Connections to Entrepreneurship and Employment Opportunities

In Tanzania, high levels of youth unemployment and underemployment persist despite efforts to promote sustainable development through education reforms. The youth demographic, comprising 33% of the population, faces challenges transitioning from education to employment due to skill mismatches with market demands. The USAID Kijana Nahodha project tackled these challenges by focusing on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). Initially, a significant number of TVET graduates remained unemployed or underemployed, prompting the project to adopt a Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA). The Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) involved external collaborations and building relationships and networks with the private sector, which are key in providing youth connections to entrepreneurship and employment opportunities. The CLA processes involved jointly monitoring visits with the government and private stakeholders, meetings, and conducting labour market assessments (LMA), which were intended to understand the youth workforce ecosystem, identify job opportunities, and forecast labour and business demands. The findings of the study helped TVET institutions align training curricula with market needs by identifying ten demand-driven technical courses based on LMA insights, which enhanced youth employability in sectors like food processing, tailoring, digital technology, domestic electricity, culinary arts, tying and dyeing, cosmetology, and entrepreneurship for both formal and informal sectors. Through partnerships and continuous collaboration forged with the private sector, the project is seeing a significant increase in employment for TVET graduates, from 30 percent to 65 percent.