Uganda’s Youth Livelihood Program (YLP) and the consequent Youth Livelihood Fund (YLF) are government programs established under the National Youth Policy (NYP), designed to support young people to find employment by extending grants and other support to small groups of young entrepreneurs, to help them to start small businesses and thus create employment for other young jobseekers. Drawing on a study involving 177 rural and urban youths, this article discusses the design and implementation of the YLP. It argues that the NYP has fallen short in several respects. In addition to funding, employment generation requires additional support for youth in a range of areas, including awareness-raising about employment opportunities, enhancing vocational and entrepreneurial skills, and providing advice and guidance on starting up small businesses.

The paper explores the contribution of the Uganda National Youth Policy (NYP) to job creation in Kampala. Unemployment especially of young people is one of the daunting problems that has dogged Uganda for a generation. Unemployment or lack of jobs for the youth has often been associated with poverty, violence, internal conflicts, prostitution, risky migrations, redundancy, drugs, death, crime and negative cultural practices. The consequence of all that is that, 63% of Ugandan in-mates were youth. In view of this bleak and drab situation, government formulated a NYP of 2001.