Youth Employment in the Beira Corridor

The Youth Employment in the Beira Corridor project aims to improve the livelihoods and prospects for young people living in rural central Mozambique (the Beira corridor), by creating (self-)employment opportunities.

The project provides skills and capacity development to young people, linking them to opportunities for employment in non-timber forest products enterprises, and for self-employment through enterprise development. SNV also strengthens the abilities of training and employment centres to provide services that are relevant to the market.

The project selects young people and identifies market opportunities for them; both processes provide the basis for skills development. The project provides training on basic life and leadership skills as well as technical, entrepreneurial, ICT, financial literacy, and management skills.

The trained young people are matched with market opportunities as farmers, beekeepers, harvesters (with sustainable links to companies). Aspiring micro-entrepreneurs are supported in setting up their own business. The project also helps to create associations, groups or clubs of young producers, facilitating the entry into more formal market relations.

Helping to sustain the benefits of the project is a network of rural business platforms, equipped to allow for ICT-based learning. Throughout the project period SNV works with and through local service providers and in some cases co-designs and supports an organisational development programme. The project also connects vocational training institutions and other service providers with private sector stakeholders in order to ensure the design and delivery of market demand-driven skills development.

In practice the project:

• Selects and registers young people;

• Assesses the demands and opportunities in selected markets;

• Analyses the skills gaps of the selected young people;

• Assesses the capacities of youth training and employment centres;

• Identifies job opportunities and skills requirements;

• Builds capacities of local service providers;

• Provides training to young people on life and entrepreneurial skills;

• Provides access to mobile-based platforms to facilitate peer-to-peer learning;

• Promotes the development of business ideas through business competitions;

• Supports micro-entrepreneurs in setting up their own businesses;

• Forms associations, groups or clubs of young producers to help them participate in the formal economy.