Southern Province Gender Division Principal Officer Doreen Chingobe has urged councils to formulate deliberate policies that would allocate a certain percentage of land to the youth, women, and other marginalised groups for them to have access to this factor of production.
Ms Chingobe made the call in Kalomo over the weekend at an engagement with the youth, traditional leaders, and other line government departments to get challenges the youth are facing in their quest to embark on entrepreneurship and self -employment commitments.
This follows complaints raised by the youth under the Youth employment and entrepreneurship (YEE) project in Kalomo who lamented that land acquisition still remains a challenge and called on both the local civic authority and the traditional leadership to assist them have access to portions of land for them to do their entrepreneurship activities.
The youth have since made a passionate appeal to chief Chikanta and Sipatunyana who attended the meeting and the local civic authority to consider them on land plot allocations so that they put the skills they have acquired to good use.
Over 600 youths from Namwianga, Mwaata, Siachitema and Choonga wards of Kalomo have been trained on basic life, social development, entrepreneurship internship, mentorship opportunities and networking by the SNV Netherlands funded YEE project which is being implemented by Environment Africa.
And Youth employment and entrepreneurship (YEE) project field officer Reuben Mutofwe has called on youth to fully participate in programmes that the government and its collaborating partners have put in place to improve their livelihood.
Mr Mutofwe says the project aims at fostering a strengthened approach to youth employment programming by addressing structural barriers, offering tailored support and promoting collaboration among community, private sector and government stakeholders to create dignified livelihood for young people.
The Netherlands Development Organisation, a non-governmental organization ( SNV), four year scaling up youth employment in agriculture initiative opportunities for youth employment (OYE)+ project, now called YEE, is being implemented in 20 districts of Central, Southern, Northern, Eastern and North-Western provinces targeting 20,100 out of school youths aged between 18 to 35.
The project’s objective is to match young people to economic opportunities in their communities by using market development and increased financial inclusion and also to increase access to employment and entrepreneurship skills and development opportunities.
