Free Access | 2024-04-12

Productive and decent work for youth and women in Uganda

Authors/Editors: Economic Policy Research Centre

Abstract:

In response to the few job opportunities created, especially for women and youth, in the past two decades, the Government of Uganda’s budget theme for the last three years has focused on ‘Industrialisation for Job Creation and Shared Prosperity’ to guide public investments for better outcomes. In line with this commitment, the government has allocated a significant amount of resources to the implementation of youth and women initiatives. One of the strategic focus areas has been linking agriculture to industry through agroindustrialization (AGI) value chains in nine priority commodities: coffee, cotton, cassava, tea, diary, maize, beef, fish and palm oil. This is at a time when youth are not attracted by the agricultural sector and prefer employment opportunities in the diaspora. This African Policy Dialogue (APD) aims to generate and share evidence on opportunities, sources of productive and decent employment, and effective strategies to promote job creation along strategic AGI value chains. It will also look at whether those who have returned from abroad can easily be absorbed into AGI value chains, using the skills and transferring the know-how they have attained. To increase policy debates and evidence uptake for the enhancement of productive and decent jobs for sustainable AGI value chains, the evidence from this APD will be geared towards influencing the implementation and revision of the 2011 National Employment Policy.