National Youth Development Council (NYDC) chairperson Saviour Chishima says the biggest challenge youths in the country face in paying back loans was lack of local business opportunities.
Dr Chishimba said at a youth meeting in Zimba district yesterday that youths must be given business opportunities in order for them to excel in entrepreneurship and reduce on low loan recovery rate.
He said there is need to accelerate youth employment in the construction sector by awarding contracts to youth-led enterprises.
Dr Chishimba echoed the presidential directive that all contracts below an amount of K10, 000 should be awarded to youth-led enterprises.
“How can you pay back when you are not given business? Why should we bring a contractor from Lusaka just to come and paint an office block when we have viable youths within Zimba? Small contracts should be given to the locals and that should be the youth led enterprises”, said Dr Chishimba.
He added that there is need to help the youths in rural communities in their social economic sphere by giving them opportunities in their areas of specialization such as agriculture and construction.
“ We have a lot of young farmers out there and we need to strategically position them in ensuring that most of them have access to farming inputs under the farmer input support program”, noted Dr Chishimba.
Dr Chishimba said youths in the country constitute a larger percentage of the total population and that they were the driving seat of Zambia’s economy hence the need to help them in entrepreneurship activities.
“There is no way we can develop the economy without targeting the youth. Without empowering the youth we cannot develop”, He said.
He explained that the NYDC has opened one-stop youth service hubs in all provincial centres in the country to help youths in entrepreneurship and other youth activities.
He said most youths fail to access the youth fund and loans under the CEEC due to the complexity of the application forms and that the hubs will provide services to help overcome such problems.
Dr Chishimba said the NYDC has employed qualified graduates at the provincial one-stop youth service hubs in order to give sufficient technical support to youth entrepreneurs.
He said through the hubs, the NYDC will also conduct monitoring and evaluation activities to ensure that funds accessed by youths are properly utilized and profits are made to enable them pay back the loans.
“What the ministry of youth and sport is lacking is a powerful and effective monitoring tool which can help curb the low recovery rate of the youth development fund. Youths once given that money they think it’s for free and end up misusing it. We need to see an end to a situation where top leaders in youth groups share this money and forget about it”, he said.
Dr Chishimba said there is need for effective monitoring and evaluation of youth development activities to ensure that there is success and positive productivity.
“As a council we want to come up with a viable monitoring and evaluation tool for the youth development fund as well as capacity building among our youths through skills training. Our youth lack technical support and entrepreneurship skills and at the end we have a low loan recovery rate. We have to help our youth to come up with viable business ideas and contribute positively to the development of Zambia’s economy”, he said.
He also mentioned that the youth council was in a process of creating a database on youth-led development enterprises in all districts in the country.
He said identification of youth-led enterprises in districts through the youth development index which will be submitted to the ministry of works and supply will make it easy for government to award contracts to identified youth entrepreneurs.
“We are creating a youth development index which will enable us know the number of youth development enterprises and the type of businesses they are venturing in. This data will be collected at district level and submitted to our head office and we shall include it in our report to the minister. We will also take it to the ministry of works and supply so that these entrepreneurs can be identified for local contracts”, he explained.
And Zimba District Administrative officer Sekani Tembo said the youth development fund is for all youths in the country irrespective of their political party affiliation.
Mr Tembo said all Zambian youths are entitled to youth loans given by different sectors of government such as the CEEC, YDF, and women empowerment and Gender.
He echoed that capacity building in youth entrepreneurship was cardinal as it would yield good results and curb low loan recovery rates.
He added that government had released funds for creation of youth skills development centres in all districts including new ones such as Zimba.
Aren’t loans given on the basis of a sound business plan? Dr Chishimba’s reasons for lack of repayment of loans by youths is miscued.
1# Dyonko I completely agree with you? You don’t get a loan and then you begin looking for a business opportunity. This is why they are now claiming the CEEC application forms are complicated…because they do not have any sound business opportunities that they can put down on paper as a business plan. the the NYDF and YDF should be clear on whether these funds they are providing are indeed loans are grants. If the intention is to run viable loan funds, these should be run inconjunction with reputable financial institutions. I have in mind MFIs (Finca, Vision Fund, EFC) and banks like AB Bank who already have a developmental focus but still remain to committed to financial sustainability.The YDF can provide wholesale funding to these institutions but let them do the credit analysis
The NYDA should focus on assisting the youth to obtain the business opportunities and ensure that they have sufficient skills and capacity to carry out the business. This can be supported through grant funding. Then only the business that prove worthy should be linked to the partner financial institutions to obtain loans on commercial basis with little or no interference from NYDA. If NYDA or the government insist in being in the forefront of issuing the loans and having the Minister handing out the cheque…you can forget about the loans ever being repaid as it will be seen as grant. It does not help that schemes always seem to gather steam in election periods. Public entities have always failed and will continue to fail in sustaining revolving loan funds. Leave that to the private sector
To say there are lack of local business opportunities is a fallacy! Failure to pay back is anchored on wrong choice of recipients with no desire for investment but consumptive reasons. @ blabla, EFC is one of the worst micro finance institutions with a Kaponya mentality! Finca, Cetzam and others that you mentioned have a more corporate appeal, beware of financial wolves in sheep skin!