Sustainability strategy for youth entrepreneurship
development services in East Africa
Youth Entrepreneurship Facility
Draft, 15 July 2013
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Table of contents
Executive summary
List of abbreviations
List of graphs and tables
Introduction
1. The meaning of sustainability in the context of YEF
2. Sustaining entrepreneurship culture, access to BDS and finance components
3. Sustaining the entrepreneurship education component
4. Sustaining competitive grant scheme for entrepreneurship promotion
5. Sustaining the evidence based advocacy component
6. Coordination mechanism for youth entrepreneurship in the three focus countries
7. Monitoring and Evaluation
References
Annexes
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The objective of this report is to describe the original sustainability strategy underpinning the YEF
programme design, and to take stock of implementation progress 40 months into the 60 months
implementation cycle. The direct outcome of the assessment is a set of recommendations to fine-tune,
where applicable and to also review the current sustainability strategy.
The target groups of the report are the YEF national steering committees (NACs) in Kenya, Tanzania and
Uganda representing the universe of YEF stakeholders, DANIDA, the YEF project management unit, the
ILO Country Office in Dar and ILO SEED in Geneva. The report might also be of interest to the community
of practitioners in private sector development, and youth employment promotion through Micro-Small
and Medium Scale Enterprise development in particular. The draft report is due for validation during a
regional meeting of YEF stakeholders to be convened in September 2013 in Eastern Africa, and for
submission to the ILO-DANIDA mid-term review mission taking place in the same month.
The report is divided in eight sections. The first section discusses the purpose of the document, the
vision for sustainability and the theoretical framework underpinning the strategy. Sections two to five
delve into the sustainability mechanisms already in place or designed by program component,
highlighting the synergies across components where relevant. Section six describes the coordination
strategies envisioned for each of the three focus countries to ensure the actual sustained
implementation of the selected activities by the local stakeholders and partners. Finally, section seven
briefly describes the plans to monitor and evaluate the progress of the outlined sustainability strategy.
Section eight concludes.
1. The meaning of sustainability in the context of YEF
According to Riggs (2010), sustainability refers to the continuation of a project’s goals, principles, and
efforts to achieve desired outcomes. Dorothy A. Johnson defines sustainability as the ability of a project
to develop a strategy of growth and development that continues to function indefinitely. This strategy
enables project beneficiaries to continue enjoying a project’s intended deliverables years after the
original project has phased out.
Although many beneficiaries think that guaranteeing the sustainability of a project means finding the
resources to continue it “as is” beyond the project period, ensuring sustainability really means making
sure that the goals of the project continue to be met through initiatives and activities that are consistent
with the current conditions and resources that are available” (US Department of Labour). This is an
important distinction as it sets out what really should be sustained. In the context of the YEF project, the
intention of the project staff and its stakeholders is not to sustain YEF as a project, with its structure,
and with the funding that supports such a structure. Rather, the intention is to sustain the project
interventions that produced results that have been realized by YEF project.
Sustainability for YEF is represented by the approaches and initiatives adopted to ensure continuous
existence and maintenance of interventions that can lead to the startup of new businesses and creation
of more and better jobs for the youth. These approaches should however be able to comprehend the
promotion of entrepreneurship culture, entrepreneurship education, evidence based advocacy, the
youth to youth fund, business development services and access to finance; either as a combination of
one, two or more, or as an individual component. It is vitally important to note that sustainability of YEF
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interventions is not something that has just been conceived. And neither does this paper introduce an
entirely new concept or new way of doing things.
In order to strengthen the sustainability of the YEF initiative the African Commission provided a
guidance which required all enterprise support services to be offered through existing local providers,
like business associations, youth-led organizations, private consultancies and training providers, or
public agencies. The design and implementation of YEF activities in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda during
the past three and half years was inspired by this vision, hence the proposed sustainability strategy is
guided by the same.
The success of the strategy will depend on a number of assumptions discussed in the paper, such as: i)
Mind set and practice change, ii) Effective linkages between project components, iii) Demand driven and
stakeholder buy-in and involvement during implementation, iv) Flexible design and implementation, v)
Capacity Building and Institutional framework, vi) Building on existing assets and knowledge.
In terms of performance measurement framework underpinning the YEF sustainability strategy, the
cornerstones are catalogues of economic, social and environmental performance metrics. For the
category of economic benefit, the lead metric used by YEF is income from (self-) employment, for young
entrepreneurs and their workers. For the category of social benefits, the lead metric used by YEF is job
quality. For the category of environmental benefits, it is proposed to fall back on the list of eco-system
services put forward as part of the Millennium Assessment illustrated below; within this list, emphasis is
laid on supporting services, provisioning services and cultural services since they lend themselves to
business development support.
The angle taken by YEF is to: i) mainstream environmental sustainability as a concern into all of its
market system development interventions, and ii) furthermore, emphasize on the promotion of youth
owned-managed businesses that make a direct contribution towards the conservation or improvement
of environmental quality.
Moreover, given the afore mentioned strategy of embedding interventions in national institutions, the
strategy also looks at the three dimensions that would be able to inform whether and how the
interventions will continue at the end of the project phase: i.e. technical, organizational and financial
sustainability.
2. Sustaining entrepreneurship culture, access to BDS and finance components
The entrepreneurship culture, access to BDS and finance components of the project are discussed jointly
as they have been implemented with a relatively more integrated approach within each country.
Mechanisms to ensure that the YEF efforts under the entrepreneurship culture promotion component
will be sustained are:
 Community sponsored multimedia based entrepreneurship culture promotion activities. This
includes extended use of community and national radio and TV stations and newspapers.
 The effort of creating collaboration between local government officers and communities in a
win-win situation.
 The use of young people and role models to deliver entrepreneurship and self-employment
promotion messages to and reach other young people
 Competition based (demand driven) approach to youth entrepreneurship development.
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

Community based entrepreneurship showcases and events.
Locally sponsored Inter-colleges entrepreneurship culture promotion debates.
As an example, the entrepreneurship culture model for Tanzania was based on a community-based,
participatory approach nick named as “Kazi Nje Nje – Opesheni Moto wa Nyika” (KNN Operation Wild
Fire). This model uses young people (graduates) as BDS Apprentices who are trained and mentored
within a period of one year to reach out to other young people. The BDS Apprentices are normally based
in local ‘Host Organizations’ – in the majority of cases locally based NGOs that also have a mandate to
promote youth employment, work with, and harness that contributions of various other players –
starting local government to media, other NGOs, community and church groups, micro finance
institutions and private sector to rally behind the cause. So far in Tanzania more than 200 BDS
Apprentices have been trained, with more than half of them so far having graduated and have reached
out to more than 15,000 young people directly through entrepreneurship promotion messages and
trained more than 11,000 young entrepreneurs.
Another interesting example comes from Kenya where the project used one of the popular television
channels on Kenya National Broadcasting Corporation to air entrepreneurship promotion messages. The
programme, called ‘Vijana In Action’ was used to profile and broadcast stories of successful young
people in order to present positive messages. Because the programme existed before, and continued to
air in between periods when YEF sponsorship was not available, it is likely that it will continue beyond
YEF.
With respect to the access to BDS, YEF has been mostly embedding BDS provision in partner
organizations with youth development mandates across the country. Moreover, the project has so far
trained more than 650 BDS providers who will be certified competent to provide high quality BDS across
all components. Many of the BDS providers operate their own private consultancy firms. Some have
formed not-for-profit organizations, while others are based within their employers. In each project
country, the YEF team has been working with national Association of BDS providers, either newly
formed by YEF or already existing.
YEF has also focused on supporting marketing and diversifying: Many of the ambitious and
entrepreneurial BDS providers have not been depending on project related work for their livelihoods.
This is especially so in Kenya and Uganda, where the BDS providers selected are relatively established
with their own clientele base and a range of products, but also in Tanzania where graduates from the
BDS Apprentice scheme have gone on to look for businesses and market themselves to other clients, but
offering the tools and materials introduced under ILO.
In Uganda, 40% of the trainers developed are from partner organizations and 60% are individual
trainers/consultants; all these have been marketing the Start and Improve Your Business programme
without any financial support from YEF and have gone ahead to conduct trainings on a cost sharing
basis. In Kenya about 66% of the 300 trainers developed are private. The remaining are institutional
trainers drawn from two Government ministries and the Equity Bank Foundation.
The project is putting together ideas on how to deal with the issue of printing and distribution of
training materials. ILO is prepared to give material printing and distribution licenses to formalized
entries that are recommended by the project. Also, to increase access to the SIYB training, an electronic
learning platform (www.moodle.itcilo.org/siyb) has been developed and is currently being piloted for
providing SIYB training in East Africa.
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Finally, the project has been following the BDS good practice that promotes non-involvement of direct
funding of training of entrepreneurs. It is only in exceptional few cases for testing of models or
demonstrations that YEF initially funds.
With respect to access to finance, since the start of Phase II, YEF has emphasized on strategy to use
external providers of finance – be they commercial banks, micro finance institutions or government
youth funds – who are prepared to lend their own money (without any grant from ILO). The emphasis is
to ensure that the referral relationship between financial services providers and BDS providers and
SMEs exist, as one of the sustainable links. The project has also been promoting local savings and credit
schemes. In summary what will be sustained in the area of access to finance include: i) Supporting the
effort of young entrepreneurs to become members of local Village Community Banks. This includes
support to their effort of starting their own VICOBAs; ii) Working with partner community banks to
strengthen their efforts of establishing and running sustainable “youth Windows”.
Overall, the YEF project has developed important partnerships under the BDS and access to finance
component. These partnerships have resulted in many of the organizations integrating the ILO tools and
programme (SIYB) into their regular portfolios and are now able to allocate their own resources for the
training programmes for youth or mobilize resources, including for SIYB from external sources.
3. Sustaining the entrepreneurship education component
The integration of entrepreneurship education within the national curricula has provided one of the best
examples of sustainability through embedding within national partners and institutions. In Uganda and
Tanzania entrepreneurship education was integrated in national curricula and has high chances of
enduring since once the new or revised curricula has been adopted it becomes part of the national
education system. In Uganda, it is estimated that more than 25,000 students started receiving
entrepreneurship education in 2012, and a similar number enrolled in 2013. In Tanzania it is estimated
that if we take it conservatively that each of the 124 teachers trained on enterprising teaching
methodologies is already interacting with 100 students least 12,400 students are already receiving
entrepreneurship education.
4. Sustaining competitive grant scheme for entrepreneurship promotion
The sustainability of the Y2Y Fund model is presented at different levels: i) Sustainability of the Y2Y Fund
Model, ii) Sustainability of the funded grantee organizations, iii) Sustainability of the businesses created
by the youth (ultimate beneficiaries). For each of these levels, the Fund has already implemented
sustainability mechanisms which can be summarized as follows.
With respect to the sustainability of the model, the implementation of the Y2Y Fund is being outsourced
to national organizations that have potential to raise and contribute additional funds to continue giving
grants for entrepreneurship development. In addition, the capacity of the implementing organizations is
being strengthened in order for them to run such a scheme successfully in the area of entrepreneurship
development.
The sustainability at the grantee level is addressed through (i) ensuring that the design of the grantee
projects enables their continuation with minimum cost, (ii) by building the technical capacity of the
youth-led grantee organizations to run their programs after the support from the Fund ends, (iii) by
exposing the grantees to other donors and community of practitioners for additional support and
networking opportunities, (iv) by providing follow-up expert support for the organizations to ensure that
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the successful projects continue and scale-up their operations, and (v) by requiring co-funding from the
grantee organizations.
Ultimately the sustainability of the Y2Y Fund program is evaluated by whether the businesses and jobs
created through the Y2Y Fund process by the youth-led organizations are able to endure over time.
Efforts at the Fund level are made to ensure that the grantee organizations focus on the aspects of
sustainability in their selection of potential entrepreneur beneficiaries and in their support to those
beneficiaries. The grantee organizations during their project design and implementation are guided by
the Y2Y Fund to address the issues that have been identified as some of the main causes for the
businesses created by the grantee projects and the projects themselves to fail. As a result of the way the
Y2Y Fund model works, the end beneficiaries get close, continuous, and long term support needed for
their start-up businesses to succeed in a long run.
The effectiveness of the strategy will also depend on the continued linkages with other YEF components
as Y2Y end beneficiaries benefit from the business trainings and partnerships created by the project with
regards to access to finance. The Y2Y Fund in turn creates wide spread interest in the YEF program and
provides media coverage, role models and mind-set change that contribute to the outcomes of the
entrepreneurship culture component.
5. Sustaining the evidence based advocacy component
The sustainability strategy of the EBA component addresses sustainability of: 1. Knowledge generation;
2. Capacity building; 3. Knowledge dissemination and use. In case of YEF funding drying up, the
knowledge generation is likely to continue being driven by the global community of experts and donors
interested in knowledge generation. What this strategy highlights is the role YEF has played and can
expect its partners to play in the future in the development of the enabling environment for the use of
the available evidence. The project is confident that the investments made will self-sustain in terms of
dissemination and take up of the knowledge generated and will be key in promoting the production of
more evidence in the field of youth entrepreneurship, either by providing intervention models to test
and/or by further promoting the culture of evidence based decision making. A few key points of the
strategy can be summarized as follows:
1. YEF believes that its activities under this component, such as the evaluation clinics, the
knowledge sharing events and the participation in evaluation processes, have contributed to the
creation of this enabling environment for the use of the evaluation evidence in the broad range
of institutions the project collaborated with, which will be more likely to use evaluation
evidence and to be able to commission rigorous studies to produce more evidence of what
works in the field of youth entrepreneurship.
2. The development of a community of practice working on evidence creation in the field of
entrepreneurship, the creation of partnerships with renowned evaluation partners in the
development of impact evaluation and delivery of capacity building efforts, and the credibility of
the evidence produced are all quality assurance mechanisms that will promote the use of the
evidence produced under YEF and promote the demand for new evidence and evidence based
advocacy activities.
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3. Co-financing of all evaluation activities: notwithstanding the premise that knowledge is a public
good and as such it might require donor funding to be sustained, cost-sharing was sought for all
EBA activities also to ensure buy-in and involvement of other key actors in the field and limit
reliance on YEF of both evidence creation and capacity building.
All the factors above contribute to a sustainable enabling environment, which coupled with resources to
produce more evidence could insure sustainability of the evidence based policy making goal of this
component in its entirety.
6. Coordination mechanism for youth entrepreneurship in the three focus countries
Consultative meetings have been held with key partners in each of the three focus countries to discuss
the coordination mechanism for implementation of the sustainability strategy.
In the case of Tanzania, the establishment of a “Youth Entrepreneurship Foundation” was proposed as a
viable sustainability option. The operation and sustainability nature of this entity is being defined and
will be shared with and shaped by Tanzanian stakeholder in the upcoming NAC meeting planned
towards the end of August 2013. A Foundation is seen as a responsive and autonomous mechanism that
– taking into consideration the need for different elements of the program to be sustained by emerging
host departments and organizations after a rigorous capacity building process, will maintain “a birds
view” of entire ecosystem and continue to promote and strengthen the emerging inter-components
synergies and complementarity.
YEF in Kenya formed an exit strategy steering committee that has been mandated to lead the process of
developing an exit implementation plan and to nurse the eventual take up of YEF activities where
necessary. The committee draws membership from key partner organizations to identify the form and
structure of an entity that should in the first instance oversee the transition and play initial coordination
functions particularly in the provision of public goods within the YEF and its linkage to all other
components. The committee has settled on a Trust as the entity that would carry out most of the YEF
mandate after exit. The Trust will oversee all current YEF components and the Trust Board will
incorporate reps of the current partners and relevant government departments (e.g., Ministry of Labour,
Micro and Small Enterprises Authority, Ministry of Industrialization and Enterprise Development).
In Uganda, as a result of the consultation, the following recommendations were outlined: i) in the
remaining period of time while YEF still operates, it should persuade the local government authorities to
integrate youth entrepreneurship at the district level and to devise means of supporting
entrepreneurship trainers to continue training the youth; ii) At the end of YEF’s operations, its central
office should be transformed into a consultancy firm whose target is to continue fighting youth
unemployment by providing services that can help in the establishment of new businesses and the
creation of new jobs; iii) YEF should start inviting and mentoring companies and organizations that are
able and willing to continue implementing YEF components after YEF has phased out; iv) there should be
a control hub created after YEF. A request was made that government should be committed to the hub
probably under the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development. A smaller committee of 6
members has been formed to support the implementation of the sustainability strategy for Uganda.
7.
Monitoring and Evaluation
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The M&E for the sustainability strategy will build on existing M&E tools and will be carried out by the
implementing partners. The section proposes some key indicators that could help track the overall
progress and performance of the sustainability strategy. These still need validation with the local
stakeholders.
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List of abbreviations
AIESEC
BAGEA
BDS
BRAC
CBOs
CoP
CSO
DIW
DANIDA
DSW
EAC
EBA
EDN
EE
EGF
FY
GYBI
ILO
IPA
ITC
IYB
JPAL
KCB
KCDF
KNN
KWFT
M&E
MDGs
MFIs
MOEVT
NAC
NCDC
NEEC
NEETF
NGO
SIYB
SMEs
SMSEs
SOVHEN
SKI
SYB
TAPBDS
TAYODEA
TEVETA
TDI
TIE
Association Internationale des Etudiants en Sciences Economiques et
Commerciales
Bagamoyo Girls Education Association
Business Development Services
Buhemba Rural Agriculture Centre
Community Based Organizations
Community of Practice
Civil Society Organizations
The German Institute for Economic Research
Danish International Development Agency
Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung
East African Cooperation
Evidence Based Advocacy
Enterprise Development Network
Entrepreneurship Education
Equity Group Foundation
Financial Year
Generate Your Business Idea
International Labour Organization
Innovation for Poverty Action
International Training Centre
Improve your business
Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
Kenya Commercial Bank
Kenya Community Development Foundation
Kazi Nje Nje
Kenya Women Finance Trust
Monitoring and Evaluation
Millennium Development Goals
Micro Finance Institutions
Ministry of Education and Vocational Training
National Advisory Committee
National Curriculum Development Centre
National Economic Empowerment Council
National Entrepreneurship Education Training Framework
Non-Governmental Organization
Start and Improve your Business
Small and Medium Enterprises
Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises
Supporting Orphans and Vulnerable For Better Health Education and Nutrition in
Uganda
Street Kids International
Start Your Business
Tanzania Association of Professional Business Development Services
Tanga Youth Development Association
Technical, Entrepreneurial and Vocational Education and Training Authority
Training Development initiatives
Tanzania Institute of Education
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TOT
US
VICOBA
WB
WEA
WEDEE
Y2YF
YEF
YEN
Training of Trainers
United States
Village Community Banking
World Bank
Women Entrepreneurship Associations
Women Entrepreneurship Development and Economic Empowerment
Youth to Youth Fund
Youth Entrepreneurship Facility
Youth Entrepreneurship Network
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List of graphs and tables
1. The Market systems development framework
2. The three spheres of sustainability
3. Pillars of operational efficiency in the market system
4.
“Operation Moto wa Nyika” (Operation Wild Fire): How it operates
5. E-Learning Platform
6. Sustainable Linkages to finance strategy
7. Gab
8. Y2Y Fund Model
9. Y2Y Fund Process and Key Capacity Strengthening Efforts
10. IE Evidence graph
11. The Case of the Women Entrepreneurship Development and Economic
Empowerment (WEDEE) Impact Evaluation in Kenya
12. YEF supported evaluations: partners and sources of funding
13. Proposed Organizational Interaction of Youth Entrepreneurship Foundation
Stakeholders
14. Sustainability Indicators
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INTRODUCTION
Purpose of this document
This document presents the sustainability strategy of the Youth Entrepreneurship Facility (YEF)
– a program stemming from the Danish funded “Unleashing African Entrepreneurship” initiative.
The programme is being implemented in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania (2010-2014), with an
estimated budget of about USD 23 million.
The proposed strategy draws its inspirations from the vision of the Africa Commission,
enshrined in its report of May 2009i; the thinking behind it is guided by principles of Sustainable
Enterprises of the International Labour Organization (ILO)ii; its conceptualization has taken into
consideration a wealth of guidance provided by Andreas Klemmer – Senior Enterprise
Development Specialist and the project backstopping office in Pretoria through a recent guide
on sustainability strategyiiiand inputs from the rest of the technical team members particularly in
taking views and suggestions from the National Advisory Committee (NAC) members of YEF in
Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The proposed strategy builds on the foundation established and
lessons learnt while implementing the programme for the past three and a half years. More
importantly it builds on some of the initial recommendations which came from the sustainability
discussions held by stake holders in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Ultimately, the proposed
implementation modalities of the strategy takes into consideration the best practices for donor
interventions in Business Development Services (BDS) provision for Small and Medium-Sized
Enterprises (SMSEs)iv.
The Vision of Africa Commission
According to Lars Lokke Rasmussenv, The key to a more prosperous Africa lies in the hands of
its younger generations. The Africa Commission envisioned that “if Africa’s demographic and
economic challenges are to be overcome, it is crucial that the growing youth population is given
prospects for good employment”. The Commission went further to stress that “Private sector
development that creates employment is a must if Africa is to reach the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015”. To support this view, the Commission launched and
financially supported the ‘Unleashing Africa Entrepreneurship’ with a view that the promotion of
youth entrepreneurship is one of the few feasible options to stimulate the demand side of the
labour market and create employment opportunities, both in the formal and informal sector. The
initiative required implementers (ILO and YEN) to develop packages of assistance to young
existing and would-be entrepreneurs, complementing entrepreneurship training with advisory
services, mentorship, and access to finance for both rural and urban entrepreneurs. In order to
strengthen the sustainability of this initiative the commission provided a guidance which required
all enterprise support services to be offered through existing local providers, like business
associations, youth-led organizations, private consultancies and training providers, or public
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agencies. The design and implementation of Youth Entrepreneurship Facility activities in
Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda during the past three and half years was inspired by this vision,
hence the proposed sustainability strategy is guided by the same.
ILO principles of Sustainable Enterprises
In vitally reality, Youth Entrepreneurship Facility is an extended social enterprise built around an
entrepreneurship development ecosystem. It is a relatively complex enterprise trying to
stimulate sustainable and harmonized outputs by entrepreneurship development players at
Meta, Macro, and Micro levels. Building such an enterprise in the East African environment
required a clear understanding of the ILO guidance on what constitutes a conducive
environment for sustainable enterprises. According to the ILO (Guide), Sustainable enterprises
need sustainable societies and likewise business tends to thrive where societies thrive and vice
versa. Conducive environment combines the legitimate quest for profit with the need for
development which respects human dignity, environmental sustainability and decent work. The
design of YEF, its implementation and the unfolding of this sustainability strategy are built on the
17 pillars of conducive environment for sustainable enterprises; six enterprise-level
characteristics of a sustainable enterprise; and awareness of the roles of the government, the
(ILO) social partners, and the ILO in the promotion of sustainable enterprises.
The need for sustainability…foreseen from the start of Phase II (2012-1014)
It is important to note that sustainability of YEF interventions is not something that has just been
conceived. And neither does this paper introduce an entirely new concept or new way of doing
things. The need to put together a sustainability strategy was foreseen during the process of
developing the project document for Phase 2 of the project. At that time a section was included
in the final project document, which presented initial ideas on how the project interventions
would be sustained. Subsequently, a section on sustainability appears in the final approved
project document, complete with initial leads of how that would be done. This paper therefore
simply puts together, summarizes and crystallizes how the programme has been working with
national stakeholders during the project phase. This is provided below for reference:
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Sustainability and Exit Strategy…an extract from the YEF Project document
Sustaining programme results after the termination of the five-year initiative is a key challenge. The
programme has been designed to function as a Facility for youth entrepreneurship in the EAC
region. Given its multi-sectorial and multi-level approach, there is no single institution that would be
in a position to sustain the functions of the facility. Rather, sustainability must be seen in the context
of the different levels of interventions and national implementing partners. However, as the
Ministries of Youth Affairs (Kenya) or the Ministries of Labour and Employment and Labour, Gender
and Social Development (Tanzania mainland and Zanzibar and Uganda) have been mandated to
address issues of youth employment, they will assume a coordinating role.
Each element of the programme requires its own sustainability and exit strategy. The emerging
thinking of the programme management unit on component specific sustainability and exist
strategies is illustrated below. Please note that the programme management unit intends to
commission the services of an international consultant to further elaborate on this strategy
framework in close interaction with local stakeholders at the outset of the second programme phase.
The promotion of entrepreneurship culture involves partnerships with television and radio
organisatons and through the programme it is anticipated that the demand for entrepreneurship
content among young people will have been generated.
The promotion of entrepreneurship education demands high levels of buy-in from national
education authorities, national curriculum authorities and teachers. Embedding entrepreneurship
education in national curricula and teacher education is inherently sustainable providing a steady
source of educated teachers that can deliver entrepreneurship education to future generations of
students.
The programme’s support for business development and financial services build on existing
support structures and seek to consolidate and further expand the service delivery capacity of these
organizations up to a point where they can effectively and independently continue to facilitate and
provide targeted finance and business support services once programme support has phased out.
To this end, the programme will pursue principles and best practice for BDS market development
by:
1. Using the multiplier approach to vastly increase programme outreach and to diversify risk;
2. Focusing on technical support to coordinators, facilitators and providers at the pre-service
transaction level, i.e., on new product dev.
3. Development, service marketing support and trainer and training manager development;
4. Stimulating competition among providers and orienting these providers towards young
customers and, over time, away from donor subsidies at the service transaction level, which
will distort markets if pursued over time.
Local intermediaries will be expected to meet at least part of the costs for human resource
development and related capacity building support; where applicable, the ultimate programme
beneficiaries will be expected to contribute.
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During the first YEF programme phase, the YEN Secretariat managed the Youth-to-Youth Fund. In
the second programme phase, a suitable local partner will be trained and empowered to manage
the fund. The selected partner will have considerable experience in managing grants schemes and
delivering development projects in the three countries as well as being results driven. A well-suited
partner could be the private sector foundations based in Tanzania and Uganda. These
Foundations are member-based organizations promoting the development of the private sector
through grants schemes and business development services with recent success. Since the
beginning of Phase I, YEN partnered with the Kenya Community Development Fund for the
delivery of the Youth-to-Youth Fund. This partnership has been a learning experience for effective
anchorage. The lessons learned will feed the overall sustainability strategy of the Fund.
Support for evidence based advocacy component is a public good, i.e. in absence of the funding
nobody would deliver the products although the results (broader evidence on what works) are
beneficial to policy makers and youth employment practitioners. This work can only be sustained
through continued external funding wherefore proactive resource mobilization will be done through
the YEN partners.
Project sustainability…a difficult call
Project sustainability is a major challenge in many developing countries. A large number of
projects implemented at huge costs often tend to experience difficulties with sustainability. All
major donors, such as the World Bank, the Asian Development bank and the bilateral aid
agencies have been expressing concerns on this matter. According to several recently
conducted studies, indications are that while the trend with implementation is showing
significant improvement, the trend with post implementation sustainability is rather
disappointing; increasingly, fewer projects are being sustained. This means that while huge
expenditures are being incurred by these countries in implementing projects, poor sustainability
is depriving them from the returns expected of these investments.
Several factors are responsible for poor sustainability. Some are simple. Some are quite
complex. Some are within the control of the project management, while others come as external
threats. Some of the factors can be (and indeed ought to be) taken care of right from at the
design stage of a project, whereas, others can be tracked, monitored and corrected during
implementation. It is, therefore important that the factors that affect sustainability are articulated
well and incorporated, as far as possible at the design stage. Later, the same factors can be
followed up through a well tried and tested monitoring and evaluation system.
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1. THE MEANING OF SUSTAINABILITY IN THE CONTEXT OF YEF
1.1 Definition of Sustainability
According to Riggs (2010), sustainability refers to the continuation of a project’s goals,
principles, and efforts to achieve desired outcomes. Dorothy A. Johnson defines sustainability
as the ability of a project to develop a strategy of growth and development that continues to
function indefinitely. This strategy enables project beneficiaries to continue enjoying a project’s
intended deliverables years after the original project has phased out.
Although many beneficiaries think that guaranteeing the sustainability of a project means finding
the resources to continue it “as is” beyond the project period, ensuring sustainability really
means making sure that the goals of the project continue to be met through initiatives and
activities that are consistent with the current conditions and resources that are available” (US
Department of Labour). This is an important distinction as it sets out what really should be
sustained. In the context of the YEF project, the intention of the project staff and its stakeholders
is not to sustain YEF as a project, with its structure, and with the funding that supports such a
structure. Rather, the intention is to sustain the project interventions that produced results that
have been realized by YEF project.
The sustainability for YEF are the approaches and initiatives adopted to ensure continuous
existence and maintenance of interventions that can lead to the startup of new businesses and
creation of more and better jobs for the youth. These approaches should however be able to
comprehend the promotion of entrepreneurship culture, entrepreneurship education, evidence
based advocacy, the youth to youth fund, business development services and access to
finance; either as a combination of one, two or more, or as an individual component.
It is therefore important to develop a detailed description of what interventions are planned for
sustainability. It may not be possible or desirable to sustain all the project activities; but perhaps
just the ones that are intended to achieve desired outcomes.
1.2 What is it that YEF would like to sustain?
This is an important question, which need to be answered right up front. YEF is one of the
bigger portfolios in ILO enterprise development projects in Sub-Saharan Africa. As such the
project has five ‘big’ components which ordinarily could qualify to be ‘projects’ on their own
under other circumstances. The projects had 15 outputs and more than 90 activities. The results
indicators for the projects were expressed in the number of new businesses started by young
people (11,500) as well as the number of decent jobs created for young people (23,000).
The assumption here of course is that all the project’s five components were mutually
supportive and contributing towards the achievement of the project’s results. Illustrated, this
means that component one on entrepreneurship culture promotion would provide sensitization
and awareness to out-of-school youth for the young people to make an informed choice on
entrepreneurship as a career option of choice. Component two would talk to in-school youth,
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who are still within the education system to help then decide, upon completion, to choose
entrepreneurship as a career of choice. They would them combine the business and
entrepreneurship awareness received, to make the informed choice. Component three would
provide the evidence of what works in entrepreneurship promotion, through rigorous evaluation
methods and feed into the policy debates, advocacy and programme design issues, thus giving
direction to the sort of programmes and tools that can be accessed by youth.
Component four would provide a ‘kick-start’, as it were, to young entrepreneurs who would like
to start a business, either as a group or individuals, created and supported by youth-led
community based projects. The idea is to promote innovation and business start-ups by young
people and at the same time ensure active youth participation in entrepreneurship
development.. The fifth component would then provide active support to those who want to start
businesses but may not have the skills to develop bankable business plans, or are in need of
basic business management skills, as well as facilitating their access to finance.
1.3 Project design assumptions, Implementation realities and challenges
Against such an elaborate design, it is critical to assess how some of the assumptions held,
and how the implementation went on. For starters, the implementation of the programme was
guided by national organizations and institutions – led by Government, who provided guidance
and support through National Advisory Committees. Within these committees, and also against
the realities on the ground, and partly due to some implementation delays, some decisions were
taken which may have affected the smooth flow and logic design as illustrated. Two instances
are noted here:
The first relates to component two on entrepreneurship education. Realities on the ground in the
three project countries showed that entrepreneurship education existed in one form – albeit
weak and uncoordinated –or another at various levels of the educational systems. As such,
Governments through the relevant Ministries of Education and national curriculum development
centres recommended the appropriate intervention levels for entrepreneurship education in
Uganda and Tanzania. In Uganda, for instance, the programme was recommended to review
and introduce entrepreneurship education at fifth and sixth form of the upper secondary school
level. In Tanzania, the programme was advised to intervene and integrate entrepreneurship
education at primary and secondary school levels. To the extent that entrepreneurship
education is aimed at increasing awareness about entrepreneurship, these decisions in some
ways ‘cut off’ one of the ‘supply’ lines for entrepreneurship education graduates – ideally to
come from tertiary and vocational training institutions – to either component 4 (Y2YF) or
component 5 (access to BDS and finance). As a result, the first crop of entrepreneurship
education graduates from the education system will only come out in Uganda in 2014, while in
Tanzania they will come out well after the end of Phase II of YEF. This affects the interrelatedness of the components.
The second factor relates to the third component on evidence based advocacy. This component
was designed to support the project’s policy advisory services based on hard evidence from
impact evaluation of youth entrepreneurship programmes. Research and evidence from this
component took time to start coming in, perhaps due to high ambition levels during project
design, and the project may therefore have missed up on some of the opportunities feed into
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policy debates, and to even evaluate and influence its own entrepreneurship programmes that it
introduced in terms of the evidence of whether and how they can be changed.
It is therefore important to decide what, and how much one wants to sustain. In YEF, this has
loosely been defined as the system of interventions that produce the businesses started by
young people, and that generates the jobs for young women and men. It is mentioned here
again that it may not be possible or desirable to intend to sustain everything that YEF was doing
to the same level, as during the project phase. As long as the core systems, players and
structures that existed, continue to exist, and interact in such a way that businesses started by
young people and jobs are created for young men and women, it may be reasonably assumed
that the sustainability strategy for the programme is working.
1.4 Sustainability – For how long?
What is the period in which a sustainability strategy would be considered having been
successful or not? In other words, based on the description above of what the project intends to
sustain, during which period should one expect the YEF project interventions (system) to still
produce businesses started by young people and jobs created for young people? In general
project sustainability is defined as the percentage of project initiated goods and services that are
still being delivered and maintained after 3-5 years of termination of implementation of the
project; this definition implies that sustainability concerns itself with:



Level of continuation of delivery of project goods and services
Changes stimulated / caused by the project
Any new initiatives caused by the project
1.5 Enabling factors in achieving project sustainability
The success of the strategy will depend on a number of factors. These factors or assumptions
are important determinants as to whether the strategy is successful or not. Some of them are
noted below:
(a) Mind set and practice change
Among the challenges that YEF project faced during the design and implementation of the
program and possibly likely to be faced during the implementation of the proposed sustainability
strategy is the challenge of facilitating a mental shift from the traditional BDS provision
approaches where business development programmes have for years been provided in the
form of subsidies financed by the state or assisted by donor agencies, to a market driven
approach, in which outside intervention facilitates market forces rather than acting against them.
The new market-based BDS development paradigm (2000) is premised on the view that direct
provision of services is not sustainable. Therefore, BDS provision for SMEs has to occur in a
well-developed market based conditions to ensure effective outreach and future sustainability.
The design and implementation of YEF has always taken into consideration the fact that in
many cases, local institutions and informal BDS providers already exist in many parts of the
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country and provide entrepreneurship and enterprise development services although on noncommercial basis. By capitalizing on the existence of these providers and a slight investment in
their capacity has provided access to young people in hard-to-reach parts of the country more
easy and effective. Responsibility was and will continue to be delegated to those who are close
to potential and existing young entrepreneurs both geographically and socially. Sustainability of
YEF will continue to recognize and build on the work of local service providers.
(b) Effective linkages between project components
A key element in sustainable project outcomes is a design based on a holistic consideration of
youth entrepreneurship promotion. An example is the linkages between the project components
such as entrepreneurship culture promotion, BDS and access to finance and the youth to youth
fund. Young entrepreneurs, having had their awareness on entrepreneurship raised through
media and other sensitization, may decide to start their own businesses. In this case they would
receive support from the BDS component if they need assistance to come up with a business
plan, or from the access to finance component, or indeed the competitive grant scheme if they
needed business start-up funds or other support. The existence and sustainability of such
linkages are important to ensure that the end-beneficiaries receive a more comprehensive
support package that can increase their chance of business start-up.
(c) Demand driven and stakeholder buy-in and involvement during implementation
Participatory problem analysis is an essential component in designing projects and can
contribute towards achieving long-term development impact. Successful programmes use
bottom-up planning to determine priorities and then accurately reflect stakeholder needs in
project design. Designs with promising sustainability results include plans for project partners to
manage both external and internal resources, which in turn promotes a greater sense of
ownership. The following are specific examples of successful consultations and engagements in
YEF.
(i) Phase 1 of the project started only with a brief concept note, and not a full project
document. The first six months of the project were focused on conducting wide
consultations with Governments, constituents, partners and stakeholders in order to
determine exactly what to include in the project. The methodologies used were open
space based, which involved partners and stakeholders suggesting and designing
project components on their country and regional situations. This led to the YEF
components fully fleshed in the project document as elaborated in the detailed project
document.
(ii)
The implementation of the project at national level is led by National Advisory
Committees. The committees comprise of representatives of between 15-20
organizations spread across the project components. The Committees play a critical
role, which includes providing advisory roles to how the project components should
be implemented to enhance synergies nationally. The committees have at times
made recommendations on the intervention levels e.g., on entrepreneurship
education.
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(iii)
Some components such as the Youth to Youth Fund have adopted the use of local
implementing partners early on in the project. For instance, in Kenya, KCDF has
always been the project implementing partner for the Y2Y Fund from the start of the
project and all activities have been implemented through them. Consequently, there
has not been a need for a National Programme Officer for the Y2Y Fund right from
the start of the project.
(iv)
Some partners have taken on large parts of programme implementation of project
activities. A case in point is the Ministry of Labour, Economic Empowerment and
Cooperatives in Zanzibar which offered to coordinate the BDS Apprentice
programme (KNN) in Zanzibar. They provide office accommodation and coordination
support as well as the strategic linkages from up the government levels down to the
districts and now there is a known ‘KNN Centre’ located in the Ministry which liaises
with other programmes run by the Ministry. Other relevant examples under the BDS
component include the private commercial banks in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania
which have integrated BDS and access to finance by having the capacity of their
internal staff developed, as well as the Government youth fund in Uganda which is
now receiving funds from Treasury to facilitate BDS to target groups.
(d) Flexible design and implementation
Flexibility in design and implementation enhances the ability of a project to be demand-driven,
to provide adaptable solutions that take advantage of local realities and stakeholder ownership
thus enhancing chances for sustainability. Moreover, this flexibility facilitates quick adaptation to
changing circumstances, as well as response to new opportunities. An example is the flexible
design and implementation for the Improve Your Business (IYB) programme under the BDS
component by financial institutions in Kenya and Uganda, where, based on a needs assessment
done before training, partners select the IYB modules to be provided to clients. This results in
the most needed solutions provided, which enhances the chances for beneficiaries to contribute
towards the cost of the intervention.
(e) Capacity Building and Institutional framework
Institutional capacity enhancement has been the hallmark of the programme implementation; for
instance, under component five on BDS the main focus has been to enhance the capacity of
staff and partners to provide support to aspiring and emerging young entrepreneurs using the
adapted tools with the requisite quality control standards. This is the same with the Y2Y Fund,
where implementation partners’ capacity was enhanced throughout the whole process of
facilitating and managing entrepreneurship development competitive grants from short listing,
selection, training awarding and monitoring and evaluation of grantee organizations. Capacity
building on impact evaluation is a core dimension of the EBA component both in terms of its
outputs and of its sustainability strategy as it creates the capacity of our beneficiaries to
commission and use rigorous evidence even beyond YEF
(f) Building on existing assets and knowledge
Stakeholder participation in and ownership of initiatives – and thus their sustainability - is much
greater when implementing agencies draw on existing practices and engage established
institutions and organizations, as opposed to creating new structures, organizations or
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mechanisms. By building on existing community assets and knowledge, development agencies
can promote positive community attitudes towards collaboration and collective decision-making,
as well as support social cohesion by strengthening relationships between internal and external
organizations. YEF has worked mostly through existing organizations and institutions that
demonstrated a similar mandate and focused on the same target groups.
1.6 The eco-system for youth entrepreneurship development in East Africa: YEF in brief
The strategy pursued in the first phase of the programme was based on a market systems
development approach with interventions on three levels:
(a) The meta level, which is comprised of the broader cultural context, including attitudes, mindsets and behaviours towards entrepreneurship;
(b) The macro level, which consists of youth policies and the business enabling environment for
young entrepreneurs;
(c) The micro-level (or market place) where young women and men economically interact (be it
as employees or entrepreneurs) and exchange goods and services (including their own labour)
for money, including with education institutions and organizations that facilitate or deliver
entrepreneurship education, BDS and financial services.
The market systems development framework illustrated
Each system level is effectively constituted by a web of interaction between individuals or
organizations representing these individuals, along clearly distinguishable functions. For
example, a district based youth organization offering business start-up training would be
classified as a micro-level service provider, while a local government department monitoring
labour law compliance of youth owned-managed businesses would be grouped on the macrolevel and a national newspaper reporting young entrepreneurs success stories would be plotted
on the meta-level.
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1.6.1 Mind-sets and values (meta-level)
The first component of the programme strategy is based on the assumption that in order to fully
unlock the potential and creativity of young women and men to become successful
entrepreneurs, a national culture of entrepreneurship has to be created and entrepreneurial
attitudes should be encouraged among young women and men. Programme interventions within
this pillar sought to not only promote youth entrepreneurship as an option for young women and
men, but to also influence and support more positive attitudes within the broader society on the
role young people can play in developing sustainable enterprises and creating more productive
and decent employment.
Component 2 of the programme strategy focused on supporting the introduction of
entrepreneurship education and training curriculum into national education systems to improve
the attitudes and competencies of students in enterprise development. This would encourage
more students to consider business ownership as a feasible career option. The programme
would achieve this through the introduction of entrepreneurship curricula into secondary,
technical and vocational schools and through the training and certification of teachers.
1.6.2 Policies, laws and regulations (macro-level)
The third component of the programme strategy bundles interventions designed to influence
policy-makers. Because there is a general lack of evidence on what works and what doesn’t
work in youth employment and entrepreneurship, a series of impact assessments would be
undertaken to create a better knowledge base for policy-making, programme design and the
allocation of resources. This pillar would also identify lessons learned from the field and provide
advice on how to support the formalisation of the informal economy. To achieve the third
immediate outcome, the programme would identify and distribute information on best practices
in youth employment promotion and commission studies that generate more evidence on the
effectiveness of youth employment programmes.
1.6.3 Supply with, and demand for BDS (micro-level)
The interventions in the fourth component are aimed at strengthening the delivery capacity of
youth organizations and BDS facilitators and providers. This would include the analysis of key
value chains and sub-sectors to identify business opportunities, the development of resource
persons, trainers and products, capacity building for impact assessment and the use of grant
schemes to test innovative projects. To achieve the fourth outcome, the programme builds the
capacities of youth organizations to promote entrepreneurship through a training and grants
programme, and through the provision of trainer development.
The fifth component of the programme strategy aims at stimulating demand among young
women and men for business development services. The programme would initiate business
idea competitions along selected themes and would offer winners and runner-ups with feasible
business ideas award packages consisting of BDS such as technical assistance and mentorship
as well as access to finance. To achieve the fifth outcome, the programme supports the tailoring
of business development service products towards young people, training and certifying BDS
providers, support the provision of BDS in specific sectors and value chains and facilitate
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partnerships with finance institutions for “youth finance windows” and the provision of loans to
young businesswomen and men.
1.6.4 Pressure points to track system performance
Building on the people-centered and rights based approach outlined in the previous chapter, the
parameter to track system performance vis-à-vis the prospect of its endurance over time must
relate to the economic, social and environmental benefits generated from interaction.
The cornerstones of the performance measurement framework underpinning the YEF
sustainability strategy, then, are catalogues of economic, social and environmental performance
metrics.
24
For the category of economic benefit, the lead metric used by YEF is income from (self-)
employment, for young entrepreneurs and their workers. As regards the lower performance
threshold, the income should always exceed the opportunity costs (i.e. the cost of any best
alternative realistically accessible), but never fall below the amount needed to meet one’s basic
needs. What these needs are is context specific and usually tracked along national relative
poverty lines.
For the category of social benefits, the lead metric used by YEF is job quality; in a nutshell, all
actors that are part of the network should enjoy working conditions that at least meet the
standards endorsed by the Governments of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
For the category of environmental benefits, it is proposed to fall back on the list of eco-system
services put forward as part of the Millennium Assessment with an emphasis on supporting
services, provisioning services and cultural services since they lend themselves to business
development support.
The angle taken by YEF is to:
 Mainstream environmental sustainability as a concern into all of its market system
development interventions, and
 Furthermore emphasize on the promotion of youth owned-managed businesses that
make a direct contribution towards the conservation or improvement of environmental
quality.1
The lower performance threshold is that youth owned-managed businesses supported by the
project have undertaken concrete steps to move towards more environmentally sustainable
patterns of operations.
Please note that for none of the three categories of people benefits, a higher performance
threshold has been set. This means that it is left largely to market system stakeholders to
negotiate the terms of trade in the interaction process, as long as the lower ceiling for network
stability is maintained. It is highlighted, though, that there are trade-offs, where excessive
income for one actor might mean unacceptable low income for another actor, and excessive
income for all actors might point towards externalization of costs – to be shouldered by the
environment or other people outside the market.
The parameters to track the extent of the satisfaction of economic, social and environmental
rights of all parties to interaction in the market system are results oriented; they measure the
outcome of market systems development processes set in motion by YEF and allow judgments
about programme effectiveness. To gain a real-time impression of the status quo of these
market system development efforts, and to undertake timely corrective action where necessary,
these results measures need to be complemented with a second set of pressure points. These
pressure points need to track process efficiency, here expressed as performance of network
actors in the execution of their respective roles.
1.7 Pillars of operational efficiency in the market system
1
It is important to note here that the concern of YEF for the promotion of decent and green jobs was only explicitly stressed after
phase I of the implementation cycle, ie the environmental rights of people were originally only implicitly referenced in the YEF
sustainability strategy.
25
In the analytical framework underpinning the YEF sustainability strategy, the process-related
pressure points are grouped along three dimensions, namely metrics related to institutional
sustainability, technical sustainability and financial sustainability. In a nutshell, interaction across
the network must meet minimum quality standards in everything that people do (technical
sustainability), be as cost efficient as possible not to adversely affect income (financial
sustainability) and be aligned with a division of labour that allows each actor to play to their
mandate and competencies (institutional sustainability). As illustrated in the graph overleaf, the
three pillars of operational level efficiency are interlinked and equally relevant to boost system
performance
Financial sustainability
Technical sustainability
Institutional sustainability
Given the afore mentioned strategy of embedding interventions in national institutions, it is
therefore critical to look at the three dimensions that would be able to inform whether and how
the interventions will continue at the end of the project phase.
1.7.1 Technical sustainability
Technical sustainability generally relates to the capacities built within national institutions and
organizations involved in implementation of various project components beyond the project
phase. The technical capacity relates to both the existence of an adequate number of people
with sufficient capacities to continue the coordination, delivery and implementation of various
activities, as well as the required minimum quality standards. Technical sustainability can mean
different things depending on the component. For instance, under the BDS component,
technical sustainability can relate to the existence of required trainers and master trainers under
the SIYB programme to continue the provision of quality training and follow up services, using
the proper training materials, after the end of the project phase.
1.7.2 Organizational sustainability
26
Organizational sustainability relates to the ability or the project partners, institutions and
organizations to integrate into their regular portfolio and programmes, initiatives and work
streams started by the YEF programme. The assumption is that once the components, or the
tools and processes developed by the project are integrated within partner organizations, they
will have a higher chance of continuing beyond the project phase, either with regular funding
support, or from extra budgetary support solicited as part of the organizations’ resource
mobilization. Again, this concept can have slightly different meaning by component. For
instance, under the Youth to Youth Fund, organizational sustainability could mean the
integration of competitive entrepreneurship grants into the regular grants applied for and
disbursed by national implementing partners, and inclusion of such allocations in their regular
programmes. Under entrepreneurship culture promotion, this could mean the integration of
entrepreneurship culture promotion messages in the regular programming of media
programmes, which, with technical sustainability assured above, will mean such programmes
continue being provided after project end.
1.7.3 Financial sustainability
Financial sustainability relates to the ability of the partner organizations and institutions, which
hitherto benefitted directly from project resources and support, to at least recover the costs of
providing services and programmes to young people, ideally with a reasonable margin. The
debate about the source of the most sustainable source of funding rages on – with some
arguing that the ultimate is to have the beneficiary paying for services rendered; In the BDS
component for instance, this means that aspiring and emerging entrepreneurs pay for business
idea generation and business plan training, while trainers pay the costs associated with the
training of trainer programmes. The debate becomes further complicated where, for instance, a
large commercial provider or a government agency has seen the need for its specified target
group and would like to purchase services and pay some of the cost for beneficiaries.
In YEF, this is relevant particularly for the entrepreneurship skills training programme developed
jointly with the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development in Uganda under the Youth
Entrepreneurship Venture Capital Fund. In this case, the Ministry receives annual allocations
from Government through Treasury to facilitate entrepreneurship skills training by selected BDS
providers. In 2013 alone, more than 5,000 young entrepreneurs were reached. The second
case is the Improve Your Business (IYB) training facilitated by clients of one of the partner
financial institutions under YEF – Equity Bank. In this case, all training costs at service provision
level are largely covered by the financial institution, with in-house trainers already developed.
2. SUSTAINING ENTREPRENEURSHIP CULTURE, AND ACCESS TO BDS AND
FINANCE COMPONENTS
2.1 Introduction
It is fair to suggest that generally within the context of implementation of YEF in the project
countries, the project components on entrepreneurship culture promotion, access to business
development services and finance have been implemented in a relatively more integrated
approach. In any case, within the context of the overall outcomes of the project, without any
27
other additional support, entrepreneurship culture alone may not be able to provide the required
(businesses started by youth and jobs created for young people). Rather, it creates or raises an
awareness (for out-of-school youth) on entrepreneurship as a possible and viable career option
for young people – a desire to be one, and which should lead somebody to seek more
information and look for more skills of how they can be an entrepreneur.
Within the context of YEF, these young people are referred to Component 5 – on access to
finance and BDS). In Phase1, these were separate components (the programme had 6). In
Phase II, it was realized that these components needed to be merged together under one as
both their intentions aimed at helping young people start and improve their businesses. And
indeed, on this objective, this is the component that is nearest to the overall results
measurement in terms of number of businesses started and number of jobs created.
The results from an independent SIYB Impact survey (using non experiments) based on
baseline data before any treatment was given shows that the conversion rate for businesses
started from training was at around 56, which means more than half of young people who did
not have businesses before SYB training went to start a business 12 months later. In terms of
jobs created for new enterprises started, the number of jobs created was 2.4 per enterprise
started, including that of the owner.
2.1.1 The case for Tanzania
In Tanzania for instance, right from the beginning of the program, Tanzania decided to adopt a
community-based, participatory approach to entrepreneurship culture promotion. At lower
(community level), the aim was to experiment a cost effective model for entrepreneurship
culture promotion that harnesses local stakeholders and reaches directly to tens of thousands of
youth with entrepreneurship promotion messages. This model, which uses young people
(graduates) as BDS Apprentices who are trained and mentored within a period of one year to
reach out to other young people was later piloted during the project life span and be replicated
and expanded thereafter. Emphasis was put at lower level because experience had shown that
it is at this level where empowerment was mostly needed. The entrepreneurship culture model
for Tanzania was nick named as “Kazi Nje Nje – Opesheni Moto wa Nyika” (KNN Operation
Wild Fire). So far, the programme is active in 20 regions and over 40 districts throughout
mainland and the Zanzibar Island. The process is briefly described in the extract from the
Tanzania work plan below.
28
Picture Above: The Shinyanga District Commissioner Ms. Anna Rose Nyamubi launching an ILO
supported district-based entrepreneurship culture promotion campaign (KNN Operation wild Fire)
on 7th day of December, 2012
29
“Operation Moto wa Nyika” (Operation Wild Fire): How it operates
Once agreement with relevant authorities has been established, YEF either working directly or through implementing partners
or both, engages local youth in a slightly modified ‘Open Space’ workshop to help them deliberate on issues that constrain a
culture of entrepreneurship in their area. During the process, they come up with concrete local actions that will be effective in
promoting a culture of entrepreneurship. This participatory planning approach ensures that the creativity and knowledge of
young people which is a crucial asset for boosting local economic development is properly tapped. Recommendations from
the ‘Open Space’ workshop will then be consolidated to form a plan for promoting entrepreneurship culture for that specific
district. With this plan in place, a district-wide entrepreneurship culture change campaign is launched and “Operation Moto
wa Nyika” officially ignited. The campaigns will expand like wild fire to cover one ward after another and from village to village
within a given ward.
Campaigns to promote entrepreneurship culture among young people aims to transform the attitudes of young people
towards formal and self-employment. Since not every young person is expected to start a business and become employer or
business manager, the campaign also aims at expanding young people’s knowledge about available employment
opportunities and qualities of employees that most employers are looking for. “Moto wa Nyika” campaigns are expected to
burn out hopelessness, lack of confidence, apathy, low self-worth and other self-destruction habits amongst young people.
The aim of the campaign is to help young people dispel or get away with language, norms, theories, values, beliefs and
ideologies, social collectives, statutes and roles, and cultural integrations that do not support or suppress the growth of
characteristics associated with entrepreneurs. Common characteristics associated with entrepreneurs (according to John Kao)
that YEF will be reviving or nurturing include: Total commitment on personal and community development, determination
and perseverance; A drive to achieve and grow; Opportunity and goal orientation; Taking initiative and personal
responsibility; Persistent problem solving; Realism and a sense of humor; Seeking and using feedback; Internal locus of
control; Calculated risk taking and risk seeking; Low need for status and power; Integrity and reliability
In addition to the above, Soo ji min Top (Made not Born) has identified ten characteristics today’s entrepreneurs’ share these
include: Recognize and take advantage of opportunity, Resourcefulness, Creativity, Visionary, Independent thinker, Hard
worker, Optimistic, Innovator, Risk taker, Leader
What comes first in the cultural change campaign is the development of above characteristics among young people, followed
by a facilitated thinking process of helping them to opt for business ventures of various types. This is then followed by
provision of BDS to help them translate their talents and visions into actual ventures, and where needed, facilitated access to
finance. The biggest challenge YEF will need to be aware of is that most institutions advocating for entrepreneurship cultural
development confuse between creating a culture of entrepreneurship and exciting young people to start small businesses.
YEF sees the creation of culture of entrepreneurship as the foundation of the whole program which if done wrongly, may not
bring desired changes. The campaigns are conducted through-out the communities including in learning institutions.
In the community, the campaigns are designed to reach all youth interest groupings including football clubs, churches, arts
groups, bus conductors, hawkers, farmers etc. During and after the campaigns, young people mobilized are exposed to
business ideas in various economic sectors, sub-sectors and industries. Since entire effort is geared towards facilitating the
emergence and growth of enterprises with growth potential, YEF emphasizes focus on high potential – high growth economic
sectors and growth oriented entrepreneurs while at the same time learning how best to respond to the needs of necessity
driven entrepreneurs and enterprises.
To make sure that the momentum of promoting a culture of entrepreneurship is maintained, competitions among individual
young entrepreneurs, youth groups, villages, wards, and districts are an integral part of the process. The BDS Apprentices are
normally based in local ‘Host Organizations’ – in the majority of cases locally based NGOs that also have a mandate to
promote youth employment, work with, and harness that contributions of various other players – starting local government
to media, other NGOs, community and church groups, micro finance institutions and private sector to rally behind the cause.
So far in Tanzania more than 200 BDS Apprentices have been trained, with more than half of them so far having graduated30
and have reached out to more than 150,00 young people directly through entrepreneurship promotion messages and trained
more than 11,000 young entrepreneurs.
2.2 Strategies to sustain entrepreneurship culture promotion
2.2.1 Mass media based campaigns
The project invested in developing specific products for entrepreneurship campaigns using
mass media. In Kenya, the programme used one of the popular television channels National
Broadcasting Corporation to air entrepreneurship promotion messages. The programme, called
‘Vijana In Action’ was used to profile and broadcast stories of successful young people in order
to present positive messages. This programme existed before the YEF partnership. What YEF
did was to provide more good stories or case studies to profile, from some of its beneficiaries,
as well as to enhance the technical content quality by providing access to business
development content from some of its tools and programme. Because the programme existed
before, and continued to air in between periods when YEF sponsorship was not available, it is
likely that it will continue beyond YEF. The TV programme reaches an average of 60,000 young
people when it airs and it is expected that many of them now have positive impressions on
entrepreneurship and are a captive market for BDS.
In Uganda, the programme used local radio stations to broadcast entrepreneurship promotion
messages. Uganda has more than 100 local radio stations. Many of them were supported
through a previous ILO project to develop business programmes for SMEs. The project
supported 18 such radio stations to develop specific programme targeting young entrepreneurs
using entrepreneurship weekly drama series, which reached an estimated combined 1.1 million
young people. YEF also contributes regular entrepreneurship articles for a monthly magazine
which is produced and distributed for free in selected schools by Straight Talk Foundation, a
voice for adolescents and adults, carrying out comprehensive sex education through the media.
2.2.2 Direct entrepreneurship promotion campaigns
In Kenya, the project collaborated with the Junior Achievement in schools to expand the
programme on providing entrepreneurship education to young people. Through the
collaboration, materials were developed, which incorporated green entrepreneurship, and a
relatively large team of volunteers were trained. These volunteers visit schools at intervals to
train students under a national programme that currently reaches out to more than 5,000
students. The initiative itself is low cost and it is expected to continue as Junior Achievement
have integrated and included the initiative in their fund raising efforts.
Entrepreneurship culture promotion in Tanzania is a de-centralized youth led-process whereby
on the youth mobilization side, trained young professional BDS providers carry out sensitization
meetings for local government authorities who then jointly mobilize other youth development
stakeholders; they organize show case events where institutions offering services to young
people/entrepreneurs interact with potential and existing entrepreneurs and during the process
they establish collaborations with local media houses for free or complimentary programmes on
youth entrepreneurship issues. Experience has shown that many local radio and TV stations in
Tanzania are currently development oriented and have many free programmes dedicated for
issues affecting young people. KNN apprentices have been using these programmes for free
31
because they add value to the stations concerned and managers view this as an opportunity to
attract many listeners. With regards to mobilization of potential and existing young
entrepreneurs, the process involves exposing participants to a business idea competition
bonanza where only those young people with a dream, vision and rough idea on a financing
strategy are admitted to entrepreneurship and business management training. In Summary,
what will be sustained under this component are:

Community sponsored multimedia based entrepreneurship culture promotion activities.
This includes extended use of community and national radio and TV stations and
newspapers.

The effort of creating collaboration between local government officers and communities
in a win-win situation.

The use of young people and role models to deliver entrepreneurship and selfemployment promotion messages to and reach other young people

Competition based (demand driven) approach to youth entrepreneurship development.

Community based entrepreneurship showcases and events.

Locally sponsored Inter-colleges entrepreneurship culture promotion debates.
2.3 Strategies to Sustain Access to Business Development Services (BDS) and Finance
Initiatives
2.3.1 Embedding BDS provision in partner organizations
YEF Tanzania already works with a network of local NGOs with youth development mandates
across the country. Part of the strategy includes identifying capable staff from these
organizations and building their capacity in BDS provision. This has also included assigning one
or two BDS apprentices to be hosted by and to work with these organizations. During the
remaining months of the project, the effort to make sure the provision of BDS to potential and
existing entrepreneurs is sustained will focus on three main activities. These are:

Identifying capacity gaps within these local organizations and organizing appropriate
training courses.

Zonal based members of the Tanzania Association of Professional BDS Providers, and
KNN Association in Zanzibar to make sure BDS provision capacity is built and spread
evenly through-out the country. This will go hand in hand with strengthening the capacity of
the BDS providers on Marketing, lobbying and networking.
32

Identifying an institution or organization that will handle the printing and distribution of
training materials on a commercial basis. This can be one role of the proposed offshoot
Foundation or a business for the institution of Master Trainers.
2.3.2 Developing Trainer Capacity
The project has so far trained more than 650 BDS providers who will be certified competent to
provide high quality BDS across all components. Many of the BDS providers operate their own
private consultancy firms. Some have formed not-for-profit organizations, while others are
based within their employers. In each project country, a national Association of BDS providers
has been formed – e.g., Tanzania Association of Professional Business Development Services
providers (TAPBDS), www.tapbdstanzania.com which will bring together the BDS providers
under an association. In Zanzibar, the BDS providers have now formed and registered a
cooperative. In Kenya, the trainers developed have affiliated to an existing network of ILO
trainers, Enterprise Development Network (EDN), www.edn.or.ke formed during implementation
of one previous project by ILO. The associations have been registered and have constitutions
and have put into place a leadership, which will enable them to provide and play a quality
control function.
The remaining period, YEF will invest in building additional trainer capacity due to the fact that
some of the trainers have either left due to attrition or have not been very active. In Tanzania for
instance, the project assumes that each region can be served by a team of 4 trainers. For new
expansion plans, YEF will therefore need to train at least 48 new BDS providers to meet the
needs of 12 new districts for the next 18 months. In Uganda, over 150 trainers have been
developed and plans are underway to develop 50 new young trainers from AIESEC and
selected Y2Y grantee organizations and an additional 100 trainers from partner organizations by
end of 2014. In Kenya, the new devolution structures requires that capacity for all counties is put
in place at least 4 private sector trainers for the 42 counties
2.3.3 Supporting Marketing and Diversification
Many of the ambitious and entrepreneurial BDS providers have not been depending on project
related work for their livelihoods. This is especially so in Kenya and Uganda, where the BDS
providers selected are relatively established with their own clientele base and a range of
products, but also in Tanzania where graduates from the BDS Apprentice scheme have gone on
to look for businesses and market themselves to other clients, but offering the tools and
materials introduced under ILO. In Tanzania, at the end of the BDS apprentice scheme,
programme plans support commercial orientation of BDS providers based on market research,
developing new networks and partners and kick start this through a BDS provider challenge
fund to find, support and document the most innovative BDS practices for dissemination and
learning by others. This is important as it can help broaden income streams, expand earning
opportunities.
In Tanzania, TAPBDS has been working as the main consultants for Tanzania Breweries
Company in a Tsh. 200 Million project targeting rural entrepreneurs all over the country under
33
the Safari Lager Wezeshwa Project.The group was responsible for training entrepreneurs
affiliated to the breweries company and providing business management and expansion
training. On another front, the group has been working with Action Aid supported groups of rural
entrepreneurs in five regions. In all cases, the group was paid as consultants after marketing
their training and BDS provision expertise to the said companies. Trends in Tanzania show that
at least 60 percent of all trainers developed through KNN programme are organizing themselves
as private consultants.
In Uganda, 40% of the trainers developed are from partner organizations and 60% are individual
trainers/consultants; all these have been marketing the Start and Improve Your Business
programme without any financial support from YEF and have gone ahead to conduct trainings
on a cost sharing basis. In some partner organizations like the Acholi Private Sector, which is
based in the northern part of the country, some modules of the Improve Your Business package
have been mainstreamed in their normal training programmes and about 200 entrepreneurs are
accessing these trainings annually.
In Kenya about 66% of the 300 trainers developed are private. The remaining are institutional
trainers drawn from two Government ministries and the Equity Bank Foundation. The
partnership with KCB Foundation is managed by a private trainer who coordinates and
manages a team of private trainers. Private training firms such as Training Development
initiatives (TDI) and IMAC have trained on average about 250 youths a year. TDI uses its
network with a local church to orgarnise and recruit youths for training. The cost of mobilization
is met by the church while the needs assessment cost is met by TDI. IMAC recruits its own
youth and supports by contributing its trainer allowances, trainer transport and trainer needs
Assessment costs. The contribution by youths is negotiated by the trainers with a considerable
amount of contribution in terms of transport and meals coming from the youth.
2.3.4 Producing Training Materials
The project is putting together ideas on how to deal with the issue of printing and distribution of
training materials. ILO is prepared to give material printing and distribution licenses to
formalized entries that are recommended by the project. Consultations held as part of the
sustainability meetings point to the licenses being given to the sustainability mechanisms that
will be formed.
2.3.5 Creating an E-Learning Platform
The YEF project has developed and is currently piloting an electronic learning platform
(www.moodle.itcilo.org/siyb) for providing SIYB training in East Africa. Once developed, the
platform will allow for trainers and entrepreneurs to interact, with the trainers being able to
respond to queries about training content or entrepreneurship in general, and entrepreneurs
interacting with each other on business development issues. Later on, trainers will be able to
run full training programmes for GYBI, SYB and IYB on the platform with either individualized or
group training. The project is also extending this platform to be available on mobile phones.
Both innovations are expected to be launched sometime in September 2013.
34
It is expected that these platforms will significantly lower the training cost at service provision
level as all learning materials will not need to be printed. The trainers will be able to facilitate
learning without the need for face to face tuition, and all costs related to venue, food,
accommodation, and transport costs for participants will not be necessary.
2.3.5 Financing of interventions
The project has followed the BDS good practice that promotes non-involvement of direct funding
of training of entrepreneurs. YEF has provided initial funding in a few exceptional cases for
testing of models or demonstrations. Most of the investments have been towards funding of
trainer and master trainer development costs, and development of tools and materials, as well
as quality control, monitoring and evaluation. Most of the costs of training of entrepreneurs have
been met by participants themselves, or other organizations that see value in working and
supporting YEF’s interventions.
In Tanzania for example, there is a good number of local NGOs using ILO training tools and
training experiences to attract support from other organizations. DSW – a German based
organization specializing on population issues but focusing on young people has blended SIYB
in its regular programmes and uses an expert trained by the ILO (a former KNN apprentice) as
35
the organization’s programme Manager. Related examples are also happening in Moshi and
Arusha where KNN trainers based in these areas have managed to integrate SIYB in operations
of local organizations they are working with.
In Uganda, in 2012 the entrepreneurship skills training programme developed jointly with the
Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development was pre-tested in fifteen selected pilot
districts reaching over 500 young entrepreneurs. In 2013 alone, more than 5,000 young
entrepreneurs have been reached through government budget allocations to the Ministry under
the Youth Entrepreneurship Venture Capital Fund.
NED Enterprises had 15 of its trainers developed through cost sharing and the team is soon
going to conduct country wide trainings estimated to reach at least 300 young entrepreneurs.
The Equity Group Foundation partnership is based on training of 10,000 youths in two years.
The ILO trained 48 entrepreneurship trainers who are full time employees of the Foundation.
The partnership is worth USD 1,419,138.00 with EGF contributing 87% of the cost. The rest is
borne by ILO and is broken down to training material supply, follow up activities and certificates
printing. The bulk of the costs for EGF are in employee remuneration.
2.3.6 Access to Finance Linkages
Since the start of Phase II, YEF has focused on a strategy to use external providers of finance
– be they commercial banks, micro finance institutions or government youth funds – who are
prepared to lend their own money (without any grant from ILO) as this was considered more
sustainable. Besides it has greater reach. This has been the case with the following financial
institutions. The emphasis is to ensure that the referral relationship between financial services
providers and BDS providers and SMEs exist, as one of the sustainable links
Sustainable Linkages to finance strategy
36
2.3.7 Promoting Local Savings and Credit Schemes
Experience has shown that in most cases in the beginning young entrepreneurs do not need a
lot of money to start their business. We have also learnt that many existing MFIs would be
willing and comfortable to extend their finances to entrepreneurs who have demonstrated
commitment in their businesses and are struggling to grow. With this in mind, the programme in
Tanzania is designed in such a way that young entrepreneurs trained under the project are
encouraged and supported to become members of local savings and credit groups where they
start acquiring basic financial discipline and saving culture which is important for them when
they grow up. As part of sustainability strategy in this area, YEF will organize a series of
trainings on establishment of Village Community Banks (VICOBA) for all existing trainers so
that they pass the same to young entrepreneurs when they train them on business
management issues. In summary what will be sustained in the area of access to finance
include:

Supporting the effort of young entrepreneurs to become members of local Village
Community Banks. This includes support to their effort of starting their own VICOBAs.

Working with partner community banks to strengthen their efforts of establishing and
running sustainable “youth Windows”.
2.3.8 Partnerships with other organizations
YEF project has developed important partnerships under the BDS and access to finance
component. These partnerships have resulted in many of the organizations integrating the ILO
tools and programme (SIYB) into their regular portfolios and are now able to allocate their own
resources for the training programmes for youth or mobilize resources, including for SIYB from
external sources. Winrock International is an NGO implementing a Youth Programme in rural
Kenya and covering 4 counties. The partnership with ILO was founded on the premises of
building the capacity of Youth Group Leaders to provide training services to youths in the region
who had already been assisted to build governance structures from the village level to the top
levels of county government. 36 of these youth were trained as SIYB trainers. In turn these
youthful BDS providers have been able to train 1082 youths with minimal cost and only with the
training material support from ILO. The youth trainers are relatively inexpensive, have direct
contact with potential entrepreneurs and are able to provide sell and provide training at minimal
costs. With Kenya Women Finance Trust, a leading microfinance institution in Kenya, YEF has
partnered to provide training for 2000 women involved in the renewable energy business. These
are women are members of the MFI and KWFT resources to access the technologies, in
product training and eventually in disbursing and managing the loans. YEF supports the
business training aspect of the partnership and the provision of the initial seed capital.
In Tanzania, YEF Facilitated the emergence of de-centralized and mutually beneficial
partnerships between more than 20 local NGOs involved in youth development and
entrepreneurship and BDS apprentices where BDS apprentices benefitted from established
infrastructure, networks, and loyalty of local NGOs. In turn, NGOs benefitted by adapting and
mainstreaming new youth self-employment promotion techniques, brought by BDS apprentices
in their daily operations.
Community Banks currently on the YEF partnership list in Tanzania include:
 Mwanga Community Banka
37










Uchumi Community Bank
Kilimanjaro Community Bank
Kagera Farmer Cooperative Bank
Efatha Bank
Dar es Salaam Community Bank
Njombe Communiy Bank
Tandahimba Community Bank
Mufindi Community Bank
Mbinga Community Bank
Meru Community Bank
In Uganda, the Youth Entrepreneurship Venture Capital Fund was pronounced in the Budget
speech of the FY 2011/12 in line with the Presidential pledge, to empower the youth to fight the
escalating unemployment countrywide; $17.8 million was provided as a start-up loan to be lent
to the youth in form of “Youth Entrepreneurship Venture Capital Fund” and of this $916,000 was
allocated to Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development to cater for training of the youth
to equip them with business management skills and knowledge in preparation to access, utilize
and pay back the loan funds. About $5 million was provided by government to three designated
commercial banks specifically for direct loan facilities to the youth countrywide and the same
amount was a contribution by the designated commercial banks to match the government
contribution. By April 2013, $8 million had been disbursed in loans to about 4,250 businesses
owned by the youth.
With Kenya Commercial Bank Foundation, YEF has worked to train 500 youth in SIYB.
Whereas the Bank’s Foundation targets youth in the agricultural sector, it has not packaged
financial product. The partnership is tripartite and involves a strong component of linking the
trained youths to financial sources. The Youth Enterprise Fund assists with linkages to finance
and assists the trained youths to access the YED funds.
The Equity Group Foundation partnership is worth about 1.4 Million USD with 87 percent
coming from EGF. The rest is borne by ILO through initial trainer Development and supply of
training material. The foundation is supported by the MasterCard Foundation to develop
entrepreneurship in Kenya. This partnership is unique, with EGF using its well established
network of branches throughout Kenya. It ensures a wide and effective reach of entrepreneurs
nationally.
There have however been a few examples of micro lending institutions that have received a
grant from ILO. Where the credit grant from ILO was used it was to demonstrate lending
towards a new product (renewable energy solutions) that micro financial institutions can lend
money to youth entrepreneurs (the case for Kenya Women Finance Trust) and, if they are
provided skills, they can make good use of the loans and repay, or for research / evaluation
purposes (as is the case with Pride, an MFI in Uganda).
38
3.
SUSTAINING ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION COMPONENT
3.1 Introduction
The integration of entrepreneurship education within the national curricula has provided one of
the best examples of sustainability through embedding within national partners and institutions.
This is simply that while for other partners, one can attempt to even implement on their own as a
project (even though it is highly undesirable and should not even be contemplated), integrating
entrepreneurship in the curricula requires that you work with, and through the national
curriculum development centres under the relevant Ministries of Education and Vocational
Training in the country.
The examples in Uganda and Tanzania where entrepreneurship education was integrated show
that probably this component is relatively more straightforward in terms of sustainability, with
higher chances of enduring the outputs and outcomes. This is because once the new or revised
curriculum has been adopted it becomes part of the national curricula of the education system
at that level. As such, all teachers are expected to start using the curriculum in their school
teaching programmes. Teacher training becomes the next most important milestone. In this
case, the project provided support towards the training of minimum cohort of teachers to provide
entrepreneurship education classes to students. In addition, the project supported the
development of tutors (who are charged with training classroom teachers), and will make further
investment in training instructors within teacher training colleges.
What do we want to sustain?
(a) Integration of entrepreneurship education curricula. In both Uganda and Tanzania,
revised entrepreneurship curricula was finalized and printed and is now part of the
education materials for the Ministries. In addition, Teachers hand books and students
materials were developed. In Uganda, printing and distribution of such materials is now
done with budget from the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) of the
Ministry, following government decision to roll out the revised curriculum.
(b) The continued training of entrepreneurship teachers. In both Uganda and Tanzania,
the project invested in supporting the training of teachers to kick-start the
entrepreneurship education. In Uganda, so far more than 1,400 teachers have been
trained. In Tanzania, the number of teachers trained (142) are for the pilot phase. The
teachers trained are already providing entrepreneurship classes to students. In order to
ensure that teachers continue to be trained going forward, the focus is now on
instructors and tutors within teacher training colleges and universities that train teachers
(c) Students continuing to receive entrepreneurship education. Once curriculum has
been developed and teachers have been developed and are in schools, it is expected
that entrepreneurship classes will proceed. The good thing is school teachers are not
like consultants who need to be paid by an external party; once they are employed and
39
in schools, their salaries are covered by government and they are expected to follow the
revised curricula. In Uganda, it is estimated that more than 25,000 students started
receiving entrepreneurship education in 2012, and a similar number enrolled in 2013. In
Tanzania it is estimated that if we take it conservatively that each of the 124 teachers
trained on enterprising teaching methodologies is already interacting entrepreneurship
with 100 students, we can take it for granted that at least 12,400 students are already
receiving entrepreneurship education.
3.1.1 Case Study: Tanzania
Introducing entrepreneurship education in the education system in Tanzania was not a straight
forward undertaking because by the time YEF was conceived there were a number of players
on the ground implementing what was considered in a scoping study to be sub-standard and
uncoordinated entrepreneurship related education programs in different fashions. The challenge
for the ILO/YEF was to identify an intervention that would make a difference and add value
instead of adding to the duplication of efforts. After a careful analysis of the situation on the
ground, YEF Tanzania decided to spearhead the process of harmonizing the delivery of quality
entrepreneurship education in the country. This process involved a series of activities
mentioned, all lead by, or actively involving the relevant line Ministry, and shows the embedding
of the whole process and decision making – a process which has resulted in high ownership
and appreciation of the achievements so far, as explained:
Through the process of mobilizing education sector players and stakeholders, YEF recorded the
main accomplishments.
The project working in collaboration with the National Economic Empowerment Council (NEEC),
supported the process of drafting and printing the National Entrepreneurship Education Training
Framework (NEETF), a national document providing guidance to all entrepreneurship education
players in the country. The diagram below summarizes the key activities taken in mainstreaming
entrepreneurship in the education system in Tanzania.
40
INCLUDING ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION IN THE NATIONAL EDUCATION SYSTEM
IN TANZANIA
Program introduction to the
education stakeholders
Headteachers and
Headmasters Orientation
Workshops
Scoping study on the status
of Entrepreneurship
Education in Tanzania
Development of a
roadmap on integrating
entrepreneurship
education was developed
TOT for Tutors (Senior
Education Officers and
Classroom Teachers)
Carriculum review workshop by
MOEVT, TIE and University of
Dar es salaam Experts
National Breafing Workshop
to Regiona Education
Officers
41
4. SUSTAINING
PROMOTION
COMPETITIVE
GRANT
SCHEME
FOR
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
4.1 Introduction
The sustainability of component 4, the Youth-to-Youth Fund, is being addressed through
different levels and schemes developed specifically to address the issue of the programs
capacity to endure its outputs and outcomes over time.
The Y2Y Fund is a competitive grant scheme, aiming to identify, test, scale-up and replicate
innovative youth entrepreneurship projects proposed by youth-led organizations. The youth-led
organizations receive grants and capacity building to be able to implement their projects that
support business creation among their peers. The key objectives of this component are to (i)
increase active youth participation in development, (ii) test innovative entrepreneurship project
ideas, and (iii) create youth-led businesses and through them jobs for youth.
The below graphs illustrate how the Y2Y Fund works through youth-led organizations as the
intermediaries that reach out to the potential youth entrepreneurs through their Y2Y Fund
funded projects; and the Y2Y Fund Process.
42
Y2Y Fund Model
Grantee Organization
Grantee Organization
Grantee Organization
(youth-led, non-profit NGO)
(youth-led, non-profit NGO)
(youth-led, non-profit NGO)
Innovative
Project
Innovative
Project
(Potential) Youth
Entrepreneurs
(Potential) Youth
Entrepreneurs
Innovative
Project
(Potential) Youth
Entrepreneurs
Youth-led businesses
Youth-led businesses
Youth-led businesses
(individual or group)
(individual or group)
(individual or group)
Jobs for young people
Jobs for young people
Jobs for young people8
43
Capacity
Strengthening
Efforts
Y2Y Fund Process
and Key Capacity
Strengthening Efforts
•Self guiding short proposal form,
partners to help with submission
1. Launch & Outreach
3. Implementation
4. Monitoring and Evaluation
5. Sharing & Promotion
Capacity Strengthening
2. Review & Selection
•Project Design and Grant Proposal
Writing Workshop
6. Scaling Up & Replication
•Technical Assistance in Proposal Writing
•Organizational and Project Management
Training
•Marketing and Communications Training
•Presenting & Showcasing of Projects
•Reporting, Monitoring and Evaluation
Training
•Technical Assistance in Implementing the
Projects
•Knowledge Sharing & Passing
10
The sustainability of this component is looked at three different levels; (a) the Y2Y Fund
model/program, (b) the youth-led grantee organizations, (c) and the youth-led businesses
created - focusing on the institutional, technical and financial aspects at each level.
4.2 Sustainability of the Y2Y Fund Model
To address the sustainability at the program level, the implementation of the Y2Y Fund is being
outsourced to national organizations that have potential to raise and contribute additional funds
to continue giving grants for entrepreneurship development beyond YEF funding. In the
selection of the implementing organizations, emphasis was put on their ability to co-fund the
implementation of the Fund, and their ability to raise additional funding for the scheme. The
broadness of their donor base and the overall portfolio and budget was also considered. The cofinancing by the implementing organizations has been close to 40% of the total budget to
implement the Fund. The table below highlights the co-funding from the implementing partners.
Countries Implementing partners
Kenya
Financial
contribution
YEF
Kenya Community Development USD 241,200
Co-funding
by the partner
from
USD 154,180
44
Tanzania
Uganda
Foundation
Foundation for Civil Society
Huys Link Community Initiative
USD 230,000
Under negotiation
USD 137,000
The funding from YEF will continue to decrease towards the end of the project, with the
implementing organization’s share of the budget becoming larger than YEF’s in 2014. The
organizations are also screened based on their institutional capacity and ability to undertake the
implementation of all the components of the program
In addition, the capacity of the implementing organizations is being strengthened in order for
them to run such a scheme successfully in the area of entrepreneurship development. To build
their technical capacity, the organizations are offered training on entrepreneurship development
using the Y2Y Fund model, provided close technical support during the first year of
implementation, and given access to tested implementation tools and processes. One of the key
tools provided is the Y2Y Fund online implementation toolkit that guides the implementing
partners through the implementation process of the Fund, and highlights the rationale behind
each step and considerations to be made before, during and after the implementation process.
To maximize the impact of the funding available, the Y2Y Fund was designed to test innovative
projects that, if successful, can be replicated and scaled-up to have a much larger and longer
lasting impact than funding more conventional models. Many donors opt for supporting the more
conventional or recognized programs promoting entrepreneurship, as a more safe option
guaranteed to show results at least in the short run. The Youth-to-Youth Fund is designed as a
laboratory of innovative project ideas from the youth, tested by and with youth-led organizations,
giving an opportunity for new ideas to come forward. The testing of innovative ideas inevitably
leads to some of the included projects proving to be failures, but at the same time, it enables
new ideas to come forward that can prove to be the most successful, especially when combined
with the criteria of replication and sustainability potential.
Additional schemes have also been developed to specifically contribute to the extension and
sustainability of the program impact. Many traditional grant schemes typically fund a large
number of small projects with no plan for continuing their support or follow-up beyond the
original funding. The Y2Y Fund takes a different approach, with the aim of ensuring that those
projects that have proven to be the most innovative and successful receive further attention in
order for them to be scaled-up or replicated to reach more young people. The most innovative
project ideas are promoted through different channels to make sure that as many people as
possible hear about them and can learn from them to implement similar projects in their own
communities. This can, and in all likelihood is happening naturally and on its own, but the ways
of tracking such replication are very limited. Therefore, to further encourage such replication
and to track its effectiveness, the Y2Y Fund designed a Replication Fund, which is a competitive
grant scheme for established youth-led organizations to replicate one or more of the innovative
Y2Y Fund projects in their own context.
the Y2Y Fund contributes to the overall efforts of YEF of ensuring the environmental
sustainability of its interventions by putting emphasis on the creation of “green”, environmentally
sustainable businesses. The selected projects in each program country include several that
45
promote entrepreneurship in environmentally sustainable areas. To further encourage this, Y2Y
Fund call for proposals in the different program countries, and particularly in Kenya, have had
and/or will have special windows for projects that create businesses that are considered
“green”. Such projects have so far focused on for example processing and producing goods
from recycled materials, organic farming, production of energy saving stoves and solar powered
“cooking baskets” from locally available materials, and production of hygienic sanitary pads for
rural women from locally available materials.
Moreover, the funded projects and the model as a whole also advance the social sustainability
of the Facility’s outcomes. The program has been found to empower the participating youth
through better knowledge and application of their rights and available opportunities, and having
more negotiation power as business owners. Beyond starting their businesses, the youth also
have a higher status in their communities and become more active participants in their societies.
The youth are able to support their families and their communities at large, which has a large
and long term impact in their lives and the lives of those around them, especially through the
intergenerational effect. This applies particularly to the young females. This is further
encouraged by mainstreaming gender into the Y2Y Fund through the inclusion of gender equity
promotion as a selection criterion of the projects, and making it easier for young women to take
advantage of the capacity strengthening opportunities provided by the Fund. Projects that take
the needs of young women into account and promote leadership by young women are given
special consideration.
4.3 Sustainability of the funded grantee organizations
The sustainability at the grantee level is addressed through (i) ensuring that the design of the
grantee projects enables their continuation with minimum cost, (ii) by building the technical
capacity of the youth-led grantee organizations to run their programs after the support from the
Fund ends, (iii) by exposing the grantees to other donors and community of practitioners for
additional support and networking opportunities, (iv) by providing follow-up expert support for
the organizations to ensure that the successful projects continue and scale-up their operations,
and (v) by requiring co-funding from the grantee organizations.
The Y2Y Fund aims to ensure that the design of the funded projects is such that the
organizations can continue to provide their services beyond the project funding. This indicates
services and activities that do not require high cost to the organization at least after the initial
stage, that facilitates support from other actors, and relies on skills and knowledge more than
financial capacity, as well as activities that generate income that can be fed back to the
organization and its projects. The grantee selection criteria, guidance to the grantees, as well as
some of the Y2Y Fund rules are geared towards ensuring sustainability of the funded
organizations and projects at this level. Emphasis is being put on the beneficiary and community
ownership, participation, and contribution, support networks, income generating activities and
strong capacity strengthening. By the Y2Y Fund rules, the projects are not allowed to offer
financial support to their beneficiaries in a form of loans, grants, materials or equipment from the
grant they receive from the Fund. This is in order for them to be able to continue offering their
services after the end of the project funding. Instead of direct financial support, they are
46
encouraged to offer a comprehensive package of services including information and linkages to
existing financial services and schemes which are widely available in East Africa.
The grantee organizations are provided extensive capacity strengthening support to design,
implement and promote their projects and to ultimately sustain and scale-up their operations.
The technical capacity strengthening offered includes project design and grant proposal writing;
marketing, communication and presentation; and organizational management and project
implementation training. The capacity strengthening also includes regular monitoring and
technical assistance visits to the grantee organizations during the project implementation to
ensure that the grantees receive on-time technical assistance and guidance on how to run the
projects and how to support emerging youth entrepreneurs in stating and running their
businesses.
In addition, YEF is training qualified members of the grantee organizations as trainers of the
ILO’s Start and Improve Your Business (SIYB) Program. This will enable the organizations
themselves to provide their beneficiaries high quality entrepreneurship training and business
development services instead of hiring outside technical experts for the task. Findings on the
ground indicate that since the grantee organizations are based in the communities which they
serve, they are being regularly consulted by the beneficiary youth entrepreneurs when problems
arise, and naturally provide continuous support and follow-up services to them. The training
enables them to provide professional services without having to rely on external often less
available external services to provide this support, and directly contributes to the sustainability
of the organizations through the additional expertise.
The grantee organizations are also provided opportunities for fund raising and networking in
order for them to acquire additional funding and support for their projects and organizations.
They are offered capacity strengthening in how to better promote and sell their ideas, projects
and organization and given an opportunity to meet with donors, private sector actors and other
potential funders and partners in networking, knowledge sharing and promotional events. The
Y2Y Fund model also naturally facilitates their access to other sources of funding, by other
funders getting interested in the organizations after seeing them successfully implementing the
projects and by the grantee organizations having increased capacity to acquire other
opportunities. As some of the most successful examples in each country, Support Orphans and
Vulnerable Children in Uganda (SOVHEN) has received over USD 85,000 in total from four
different donors; and Alert agency for Desired Development has received USD 31,000 from
Open Society for East Africa and National Union of Disabled Persons of Uganda (NUDIPU)
since the Y2Y Fund project. In Tanzania, Tanga Youth Development Association (TAYODEA)
has received in total over USD 300,000 for additional projects; and BAGEA close to USD
50,000, both from four different donors. In Kenya, Waste 2 Wealth has received close to USD
23,000 for up-scaling the Y2Y Fund initiated project.
To further and directly support the continuation of the successful Y2Y Fund financed projects,
the projects that are evaluated successful are supported to develop a solid sustainability and
scaling-up plan, and submit a proposal to the Y2Y Fund for potential in-kind or financial support
47
for the scaling-up. An expert consultant is sent to each successful project to help the
organization to come up with the plan and proposal. Based on the proposals and plans
received, the Y2Y Fund will make a decision on which projects to support in scaling up their
projects and how.
Finally, to contribute to the financial sustainability of the grantee organizations, co-financing has
been required from all involved organizations since the initiation of the Fund. The grantee
organizations are required to provide 25% of the project budget as counterpart contribution. For
the Replication Fund projects the counterpart contribution is minimum 40%.
4.4 Sustainability of the businesses created by the youth (ultimate beneficiaries)
Ultimately the sustainability of the Y2Y Fund program is evaluated by whether the businesses
and jobs created through the Y2Y Fund process by the youth-led organizations are able to
endure over time. Knowing that the vast majority of start-ups typically fail, efforts at the Fund
level are made to ensure that the grantee organizations focus on the aspects of sustainability in
their selection of potential entrepreneur beneficiaries and in their support to those beneficiaries.
The grantee organizations during their project design and implementation are guided by the
Y2Y Fund to address the issues that have been identified as some of the main causes for the
businesses created by the grantee projects and the projects themselves to fail. They are
advised throughout the capacity building and technical assistance provided to select
beneficiaries with a potential to succeed in running a business and to sustain their businesses in
a long run, to identify or help their beneficiaries identify niche markets to enter into, to ensure
that there are markets for their products or services, to ensure that the projects cover aspects of
marketing and logistics, and to put efforts into linking the beneficiaries to finance and BDS.
These have been identified as some of the main causes for the businesses created by the
grantee projects and the projects themselves to fail. Beyond this, the program ensures that the
end beneficiaries, the potential entrepreneurs receive high quality business support as part of
the grantee projects by requiring that the grantee organizations use certified ILO -SIYB trainers
to deliver entrepreneurship training and BDS to the end beneficiaries, or, as mentioned before,
are trained themselves to be SIYB trainers.
As a result of the way the Y2Y Fund model works, the end beneficiaries get close, continuous,
and long term support needed for their start-up businesses to succeed in a long run. In many
cases, the Y2Y Fund grantee organizations are located in rural remote communities and are
serving the youth from the same communities. This approach ensures that the youth who start
their businesses receive close and continuous support from the grantee organization. This is
considered to be highly beneficial in ensuring the sustainability of the individual businesses as
they are not functioning in isolation, but as part of the larger community with a support network
behind them.
4.5 Linkages with other YEF components
48
The sustainability of component 4 of YEF is supported by component 1, and closely linked with
component 5, especially, as both are under the micro level interventions. The business training
offered to the component 4 end beneficiaries is provided by the trainers trained under
component 5, using the materials developed as part of the YEF program. The entrepreneurs
also benefit from the partnerships created under component 5 with regards to access to finance.
The Y2Y Fund in turn creates wide spread interest in the YEF program and provides media
coverage, role models and mind-set change that contribute to the outcomes of component 1,
the entrepreneurship culture. It also contributes to the overall business and job creation
outcomes. The network of youth-led organizations created through this component is also
utilized to distribute or gain information and to access different districts throughout the countries
by the other components. The evidence generated through component 3 is utilized to guide the
grantee organization in entrepreneurship project design with an emphasis on comprehensive
models.
5. SUSTAINING THE EVIDENCE BASED ADVOCACY COMPONENT
5.1 Introduction
‘Creating a culture in which rigorous (..) evaluations are promoted, encouraged, and financed
has the potential to revolutionize social policy during the 21st century, just as randomized trials
revolutionized medicine during the 20th’ (Esther Duflo cited in The Lancet, 2004).
This strategy outlined in this document will present and address the following key points:
1. What needs to be sustained and how the project intend to sustain interactions after the
lifespan of YEF?
2. The proposed role of implementing partners in the areas of technical, institutional and
financial sustainability (Annex 1)
3. The current assessment of the component in terms of environmental, social and
economic benefits generated (Annex 2)
Given the complexity and idiosyncratic nature of the EBA component in the context of the YEF,
the strategy is premised by the component’s Theory of Change, i.e. a visual roadmap of how the
project envisions the activities to lead to the ultimate goal of the component, i.e., informing
decision-making in the youth entrepreneurship field. The ambition level is that project
beneficiaries will continue to enjoy some but maybe not all of the component’s intermediate
outcomes outlined in the Theory of Change, years after the YEF has phased out. The Theory of
Change summarized below should help clarifying what will be sustained and how according to
our current vision.
5.2 EBA’s Theory of Change
The Theory of Change (see visual representation below) presents a hierarchical model of using
evaluation evidence to stimulate changes in different realms through various actors. The theory
49
of change attempts to visualize the anticipated process to build evidence in the youth
entrepreneurship policy area, support similar programs, strengthen the evaluation culture and
capacity, and justify replication.
The impact evaluations conducted under this component should ultimately improve the lives of
youth through improved policy and programming on youth entrepreneurship for years to follow.
The results from the on-going impact evaluations will be used for influencing different levels and
dimensions of programs and policy. The desired use of the impact evaluation process and
evidence produced is two-fold: instrumental and conceptual. First is to influence policy makers
and promoters in the three project countries and beyond to make evidence-based decisions for
better resource allocation and program design in the area of youth entrepreneurship. Second is
to enhance the global research debate on both youth entrepreneurship and impact evaluation
methodologies.
At the lower level where the YEF and evaluation teams have the most control, several activities
are carried out (meetings, trainings, knowledge products) which provide a basis for stakeholder
engagement (participatory approach), creating a culture of, and capacity for impact evaluation
use (capacity building), and raising awareness about the potential evidence produced and it
use (knowledge sharing). These influences are central to the process of achieving the long
term goal of deriving changes in projects, programmes, or policies in the area of youth
entrepreneurship. The key hypothesis is that by involving our stakeholders in the process of
conducting the evaluation, resistance is reduced while up take of results is increased.
The success of this logical process relies on a receptive audience that not only recognizes
youth entrepreneurship as a priority issue but also values monitoring and evaluation as a useful
planning/policymaking tool and is open to learning about impact evaluation methods and results.
An enabling environment will act as a window of opportunity to influence changes.
On a parallel level, there would also be intermediate outcomes in the research debates. At this
level, changes will go beyond framing the agendas of YEF’s three focus countries and will
contribute to a global evidence base on youth entrepreneurship. Debates on methodological
rigor and use of different impact evaluation methods will be also enhanced thereby benefiting
both the academic community and the consumers of the evidence produced. These changes
will be determined by continuous, transparent, and well-targeted dissemination of knowledge
and data through the media, events and conferences (knowledge sharing). Sharing the
knowledge produced by the evaluation will be a very important channel of policy impact.
As depicted in the visual, the desired ultimate outcomes are beyond the sphere of control or
influence of the initial evaluation evidence and become highly dependent on the intentions,
interests, and capacities of all stakeholders which may change and will be influenced by other
priorities and evidence cumulated beyond YEF supported evaluations.
50
51
52
Local capacity and a culture of evidence-based policy making and informed stakeholders on
relevant evidence are at the basis of knowledge dissemination and take up. In case of YEF
funding drying up, the knowledge generation is likely to continue being driven by the global
community of experts and donors interested in knowledge generation. What this strategy
highlights is the role YEF has played and can expect its partners to play in the future in the
development of the enabling environment for the use of the available evidence.
5.3 What needs to be sustained?
Sustainability under this component will seek to address three dimensions:
1. Knowledge generation, i.e. the implementation and finalization of YEF supported impact
evaluations (not all will be concluded during the life-span of YEF) and the development
of new impact evaluations in the field of youth entrepreneurship.
2. Capacity building, i.e., the activities aimed at creating the capacity of policy-makers to
commission, conduct and/or use the results produced by rigorous impact evaluation
designs.
3. Knowledge dissemination and use, i.e. the dissemination and sharing of knowledge
produced by YEF supported impact evaluations and the integration of this knowledge in
the larger body of evidence available in the field of youth entrepreneurship which can be
used by policy-makers and practitioners to make evidence based decisions.
5.4 At which scale do we intend to sustain interaction?
The core outcome of the component is knowledge generation and use. Capacity building and
dissemination are instrumental to both ends. Yet evidence of what works is built incrementally: it
takes more than a few evaluations to build evidence that can inform policy and capacity building
is needed to create of culture of evidence based decision making. Also, impact evaluations are
resource and data intensive; they produce knowledge, which is known as a public good. This
implies that while the benefits are shared, the costs are not. High quality impact evaluations
generate learning relevant across the international community, yet they are typically paid for by
one agency, country or project. For these reasons, it will not be possible to sustain the current
scale of evidence production and capacity building efforts the component without additional
funding. Local partners and stakeholders will not have the necessary resources (including
financial resources) and technical skills at the end of this YEF program to be able to sustain the
knowledge generation and capacity building activities without donor funding and external
technical expertise. Nonetheless, the project is confident that the investments made will selfsustain in terms of dissemination and take up of the knowledge generated and will be key in
promoting the production of more evidence in the field of youth entrepreneurship, either by
providing intervention models to test and/or by further promoting the culture of evidence based
decision making.
53
5.5 The sustainability strategy
The strategy is envisaged and elaborated in accordance with the traditional three dimensions,
as follows;
5.1 Institutional arrangements:
EBA emphasizes developing local capacity and a culture of making evidence based policy
making and evidence-based decision making. Embedding and integrating the production of
evidence in decision making from evaluations in policies and programs will depend on the
willingness and capacity of decision makers to find and interpret the available evidence. YEF
believes that its activities under this component, such as the evaluation clinics, the knowledge
sharing events and the participation in evaluation processes, have contributed to the creation of
this enabling environment for the use of the evaluation evidence in the broad range of
institutions the project collaborated with, which will be more likely to use evaluation evidence.
YEF project partners will also be able to collaborate on the creation of more evidence through
the partnerships which the project has promoted with organizations that have expertise in the
field of impact evaluation, such as IPA (Innovation for Poverty Action) and BRAC – see below.
5.2 Quality assurance mechanisms:
Developing a community of practice (CoP) around impact evaluations and evidence based
policy making and programming on youth entrepreneurship. The EBA component is developing
an on-line CoP around Monitoring and Evaluation and Youth Entrepreneurship which builds on
YEN’s existing on-line groupsite on M&E and youth employment more broadly. The groupsite
already has more than 700 members, of which approximately 200 are participants of YEF clinics
and ongoing impact evaluations. The idea behind creating this online CoP is to bring together
knowledge, resources, and experiences in the area of M&E and youth entrepreneurship. It will
be a platform for practitioners, policymakers and researchers to learn, share, and apply in order
to better promote youth entrepreneurship. These efforts will self-sustain after YEF as the
groupsite members will continue exchanging knowledge and experience and YEN will continue
by providing technical input where and when needed.
Building partnerships with renowned impact evaluation experts and organizations with expertise
in impact evaluations which would continue in future efforts of capacity building and knowledge
generation in the field building on what was done by YEF. As shown in Table 1 below,
partnerships where built for all ongoing impact evaluations. This means that efforts to finalize
evaluations, disseminate and build on their knowledge do not rely solely on YEF and will be
carried out by the partners even after the life span of YEF.
Partnerships were also built for the delivery of the evaluation clinics and other YEF supported
learning events (such as the monitoring and evaluation tracks of the youth development
trainings delivered by ITC). Through these events, participants were connected to local and
international expertise on impact evaluation as well as additional sources of information on what
54
works and what doesn’t. Main partners in the planning and development of the evaluation clinics
include 3ie (International initiative on Impact Evaluation), Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
(JPAL), IPA, The World Bank, BRAC, DIW. All these organizations specialize or have a very
strong focus on the production and use of evidence for international development.
These partnerships will ensure that knowledge is disseminated and used beyond the lifespan of
YEF. As the ILO and YEN, the evaluation partners have a focus on policy impact. They all have
an interest in collaborating or leading efforts in publishing evaluation results through papers or
policy briefs, as well as disseminating the results through blogs, media, conferences, evaluation
databases and donor meetings. These activities will be sustained even without YEF’s support.
Credibility of the evidence produced and disseminated by YEF is also a driver of sustainability
as a quality assurance mechanism.
5.3 (Co)-Financing models:
Notwithstanding the premise that knowledge is a public good and as such it might require donor
funding to be sustained, cost-sharing was sought for all EBA activities also to ensure buy-in and
involvement of other key actors in the field.
Evaluations: As showed in the table below, all YEF supported evaluations are co-financed by
other actors. YEF only provides seed funding, technical expertise and, where needed, supports
organizations in further fundraising. All the organizations implementing the projects under
evaluation have contributed substantial time to the development and implementation of the
evaluations. It is mostly in-kind contributions but it is worth considering as it has been a key
ingredient to the success of the evaluations conducted so far. During evaluation clinics, staff
time of technical experts invited to the clinics was provided as in-kind contributions from YEF’s
evaluation partners.
All the factors above contribute to a sustainable enabling environment, which coupled with
resources to produce more evidence could insure sustainability of the evidence based policy
making goal of this component in its entirety and without further financial support will ensure that
part of the goal can be sustained.
55
The Case of the Women Entrepreneurship Development and Economic Empowerment (WEDEE)
Impact Evaluation in Kenya
The WEDEE program is currently being evaluated using an experimental design, which is considered the
most rigorous impact evaluation design. The evaluation will measure the causal impact of ILO’s GET Ahead
business training programme on the profitability, growth, and survival of female-owned businesses but also
whether this impact is greater when coupled with complementary business support services and whether any
gains in profitability come at the expense of other business owners. The evaluation is carried out in
partnership with the Kenya office of Innovation for Poverty Action (IPA), the International Center for
Research on Women (ICRW) and the World Bank. It has been granted a 725,000USD award from the
International Initiative on Impact Evaluation. The WEDEE impact evaluation experience is considered a good
practice of how the EBA component interprets and foresees the sustainability of its activities for the following
reasons. Firstly, it has been designed following a participatory approach whereas the NAC in Kenya and the
ILO team was involved since the beginning in key decisions relating to the evaluation design and
implementation plans, such as the definition of the evaluation questions, the target group, the location of the
evaluation activities, how to define and select the control group, etc. This approach is not only very important
because it makes the evaluation more valid and relevant to its context, but also because stakeholder’s
involvement will increase their awareness of, and capacity to understand the results of the evaluation which
in turn increases the likelihood of evidence take up. Secondly, there was a substantial commitment to cofunding internally within the ILO and from external resources which resulted in substantial financial
investments in the evaluation beyond YEF’s contribution, consequently increasing the quality and credibility
of the results and demonstrating substantial commitment of other actors beyond YEF to the evidence based
agenda. Finally, the involvement of other local and global partners assures that the evaluation
implementation and result dissemination does not rely solely on the YEF team. There is a substantial interest
from all partners for this evaluation to succeed and have policy impact. Also, all evaluation partners are
renowned in the field of evaluation and have a great focus on evidence production for policy making.
Through their involvement in the evaluation, they established a direct link with other YEF stakeholders and
will continue promoting the evidence based culture and support YEF partners technically beyond the lifespan of YEF.
56
Table 1. YEF supported evaluations: partners and sources of funding
Country
Project
Pjt Implementer Evaluation Partner
Malawi
Vocation Training for
Vulnerable Youth
TEVETA
World Bank/Yale
University
$97'000 270,000 (UBW/World bank/Dfid)
Tanzania
Emprowerment and
Livelihoods for Girls
BRAC
BRAC/University College
London
205,000 (World Bank/Nike
$48'416 Foundation/IIG/Mastercard)
Ethiopia
Entrepreneurship Training
for Street Kids
SKI
Swiss Academy for
Development (SAD)
$36'000 -
Uganda
Revised Entrepreneurship
Curriculum
Entrepreneurship and
Leadership Development
Uganda
Skills for entrepreneurship
development
Uganda
NCDC
Educate
IPA/DIW/Berkley
University
IPA/DIW/Berkley
University
IPA/DIW/Berkley
University
YEF Funding Other funding
$7'556 $65'015 58,000 (Barr Foundation)
758,000 (USAID/Jacobs
$99'062 Foundation/Anonimous Donor)
24,000 (London School of
$118'165 Economics)
Uganda
IPA/Educate
Business training, grants and YEF/Pride
loans
Microfinance
Kenya
Microfranchising On Young
Women
IRC
IPA/World Bank
$72'161 World Bank/PEDI
Kenya
Entrepreneurship and
Empowerment for Women
ILO/YEF
IPA/World Bank
$79'051 725,000 (3ie)
DIW
57
6. COORDINATION MECHANISM FOR YOUTH ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE THREE
FOCUS COUNTRIES
6.1 Coordination of Youth Entrepreneurship Development in Tanzania
Sustainability has been defined in different ways and in most cases it has depended more on
the context. Despite this disparity there seem to be a common understanding defining it as” the
ability of a project to develop a strategy of growth and development that continues to function
indefinitely. This strategy enables project beneficiaries to continue enjoying a project’s intended
deliverables years after the original project has phased out (Dorothy A. Johnson).
After a careful analysis of potential challenges embed in each of the options proposed above,
participants of a sustainability meeting help in Morogoro in May 2013 proposed the
establishment of a more responsive and autonomous mechanism that – taking into
consideration the need for different elements of the program to be sustained by emerging host
departments and organizations after a rigorous capacity building process, will maintain “a birds
view” of entire ecosystem and continue to promote and strengthen the emerging intercomponents synergies and complementarity.
Operating at high level, this entity will be
responsible for identifying operational gaps among different player and mobilizing and injecting
the needed support accordingly. In this regards, a sustainability task force which has been
deliberating on the issue and initially is proposing the establishment of “Youth Entrepreneurship
Foundation” as a viable sustainability option for Tanzania. The operation and sustainability
nature of this entity is being defined and will be shared with and shaped by Tanzanian
stakeholder in the upcoming NAC meeting planned towards the end of August 2013.
The Youth Entrepreneurship Foundation (YEF)
Preliminary thinking about the proposed “Youth Entrepreneurship Foundation” points to the
following:
It will be an entity bringing together relevant stakeholder as a Technical Board. Board
membership will be based on the complementing value that a member brings to the board. The
proposed initial composition of the founding board requires board members with interest and
expertise in the following sectors.





Multimedia based Entrepreneurship culture promotion
Entrepreneurship education or entrepreneurship skills development
BDS promotion
SME financing
Social entrepreneurship development
58

i.
ii.
iii.
ICT for Development
At Higher level, both the Technical Board and the Director (head of secretariat) will
present their plans and program report to the NAC which shall meet at least twice
per year
The foundation will have a lean secretariat headed by the Director/Manager
supported by at least two support staff - one dealing with management and technical
coordination and the other handling all administrative and financial related issues
including office management and book keeping. The manager will be responsible for
fund-raising, networking and marketing on top of overall day to day management of
the Foundation reporting directly to the Technical Board.
The Foundation will maintain the five components of the original YEF project but with
slight modification on components 2 and 3. The new entrepreneurship development
ecosystem will include the following:
 Entrepreneurship culture promotion
 Supporting entrepreneurship education with a strong focus on extra-curricular
and after school activities.
 Capacity Building of Youth led organizations.
 Promoting entrepreneurship Research
 Access to BDS and Finance
Detailed description of each of the proposed components including their sustainability and
financial implications in-terms of start-up capital needed in order to establish such a mechanism
is being defined and will be presented in sub-sequent version of this strategy.
Proposed Organizational Interaction of Youth Entrepreneurship Foundation Stakeholders
Ent Culture
Promotion
Players
BDS
Providers
General
Coordination
Ent. Research
Capacity Bldg
of Youth
Organizations
Youth
Developmen
t supporters
Ent. Education
Players
59
Proposed Structure of the Coordination Unit
General Coordinator/Manager
(Networking, Fund Raising,
Genaral Manegement)
Entrepreneurship
Education Officer
Entrepreneurship
Culture
Promotion Officer
BDS Officer
Institutional
Capacity Building
officer
Proposed Milestones
This proposed sustainability strategy will unfold as presented below:
Output & Activities
2013
July –
August
September
December
2014
January
- March
April June
July September
2015
October December
January
– June
July
December
Finalize
initial
Concept Note and
discussion with key
stakeholders and the
NAC
Incorporate
comments
from
stakeholders and the
NAC and production
of final Draft
Establish a Technical
Board and initiate
constitution drafting
and
registration
60
process
Second presentation
to the NAC
Conduct
first
planning
workshop
for the proposed
Board members,
Establish operational
procedures, annual
(2015) work plan and
budget and fund
raising strategy.
Presentation to the
NAC
Finalize registration
issues
Establishing a small
coordination office
Officially
launching
the foundation.
Implement the first
entry activities as per
annual work plan
Develop Long term
plan for 2016 -2020
Monitoring,
Evaluation,
knowledge sharing
Alliance building between different players, monitoring and evaluation and knowledge
dissemination and sharing will be the overall responsibility of the proposed off-shoot entity
(Youth Entrepreneurship Foundation). Once established, the foundation will adopt the current
M&E system used by the parent YEF project.
6.2 Coordination of Youth Entrepreneurship Development in Kenya
Sustaining the YEF programme results after the termination of the 5 year initiative is a key
concern set out in the design of the programme. Given the multi-sectorial and multi-level
approach of the programme with activities at the meta, macro, meso and micro level there is no
single institution that over time will be able to sustain the functions of the facility. Therefore,
sustainability must be seen in the context of the different levels of interventions and national
implementing partners at each level and the sustainability of the services at these levels.
ILO constituents, i.e., Ministry of Labour, Federation of Kenya Employers and the Central
Organization of Trade Unions have through the YEF National Advisory Committee, been key in
steering the project. The Ministry of Labour, Ministry of Youth and the Ministry of
Industrialization and Enterprise Development in Kenya have various mandates addressing
61
youth employment. Several other partners from, private trusts, private sector operators, and
foundations have collaborated with YEF in attaining its objective this far.
Towards developing a sustainability strategy for the YEF, the key partners need to assume
coordinating and sustainability implementation roles. The YEF has started consultations and
discussions with all key partners to develop the strategy. Part of the discussion has been to
determine what levels of resources the local partners can provide to sustain the programme and
what additional support may be required during the remaining period of the programme.
YEF in Kenya has held consultative meetings with key partners, culminating to formation of an
exit strategy steering committee that has been mandated to lead the process of developing an
exit strategy and exit implementation plan and to nurse the eventual take up of YEF activities
where necessary. The committee draws membership from key partner organizations to identify
the form and structure of an entity that should in the first instance oversee the transition and
play initial coordination functions particularly in the provision of public goods within the YEF and
its linkage to all other components.
After looking at several alternatives from a private company, an NGO and foundations, the
committee settled on a Trust as the entity that would carry out most of the YEF mandate after
exit. A Trust Board can have Government as Trustees as well as members drawn from the
private sector and development sector. The Trust will oversee the all current YEF components
and will specifically: spearhead creation of partnerships, fundraising, marketing and advocacy,
licensing of practitioners, SIYB quality management of technical services, including SIYB
materials provision, quality assurance, and follow-ups. The Trust Board will incorporate reps of
the current partners and relevant government departments (e.g., Ministry of Labour, Micro and
Small Enterprises Authority, Ministry of Industrialization and Enterprise Development).
It was proposed that the outfit (TRUST) should seek to create jobs for youth through the 5
components as its YEF’s top mandate. In addition, members agreed that the structure should
specifically encompass the youth and women in its leadership.
Milestone to forming the Youth Entrepreneurship Facility Trust
Establishing the Youth Entrepreneurship Facility Trust
Activity
Register Trust
Establish Registration Requirements
Selecta and agree on Board membership
Draw a trust deed
Register the trust
Quarters
( Starting July2013)
q1 q2 q3 q4 q5
Form Secretariat
Create a two year Business plan
Acquire resources
Establish secretariat
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Proposed Organization Structure
Trust Board comprising key
partners but headed by
Government
Trust
Board
Secreatriat, YEF Trust,
Headed by a CEO with
lean support staff
YEF Trust
Secretariat
Unit committees,
headed by Relavant
Partners bodies
ECP
BDS and access to
finance
Entreprenuership
Education
Advocacy
6.3 Coordination of youth entrepreneurship development in Uganda
This is a draft proposed sustainability strategy for Uganda with suggestions and
recommendations. Currently, YEF has a number of partners involved in its implementation and
components link into one another directly and/or indirectly for instance promoting
entrepreneurship culture feeds into access to BDS and finance. YEF partners will remain after
the end of the Facility and its beneficiaries will continue seeking the services thereof in the
continuous struggle against youth unemployment. The question is whether the proposed
sustainability strategy can continue with such linkages after YEF.
The YEF National Advisory Committee comprises of a number of institutions including the ILO
constituents and these have provided guidance to the project. The YEF started consultations
with the NAC members and other key stakeholders and discussions on approaches and
strategies through which its interventions can be sustained in Uganda after 2014 have been
held so as to come up with a sustainability strategy.
The stakeholders have defined sustainability for YEF as the approaches adopted to ensure
continuous existence and maintenance of interventions that can lead to the startup of new
businesses and creation of more jobs for the youth. These approaches should however be able
to comprehend the promotion of entrepreneurship culture, entrepreneurship education,
evidence based advocacy, the youth to youth fund, business development services and access
to finance. Towards developing a sustainability strategy for the YEF, the key partners need to
assume coordinating and sustainability implementation roles.
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There are areas where sustainability has been almost achieved;
1. Promoting entrepreneurship education; the government decided to roll out the revised
curriculum in all secondary schools offering entrepreneurship education at high school.
Government mobilized financial resources for the printing of the necessary materials
(syllabus, teachers guide, learners workbooks and the training manual)
2. ILO-YEF developed an Entrepreneurship Skills Training Manual for the government
through the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development for the support towards
the Youth Venture Capital Funds. Government has also invested own resources towards
Entrepreneurship Skills trainings across the country. Capacity of BDS provider
institutions has been strengthened (through Training of Trainers) to deliver the package.
3. Expected financial contribution of 3 million Euros from the European Union for next three
years towards the Facility is an indication that the programme positive results contribute
towards resource mobilization
Some suggestions have been put forward by the stakeholders including NAC members;
a) In the remaining period of time while YEF still operates, it should persuade the local
government authorities to integrate youth entrepreneurship at the district level and to
devise means of supporting entrepreneurship trainers to continue training the youth.
b) At the end of YEF’s operations, its central office should be transformed into a
consultancy firm whose target is to continue fighting youth unemployment by providing
services that can help in the establishment of new businesses and the creation of new
jobs.
c) YEF should start inviting and mentoring companies and organizations that are able and
willing to continue implementing YEF components after YEF has phased out.
d) There should be a control hub created after YEF’s expiry, which should be well defined
in terms of how big it shall be and what it shall look like. A request was made that
government should be committed to the hub probably under the Ministry of Gender,
Labour and Social Development.
e) A smaller committee of 6 members to support the YEF technical team to come up with a
sustainability strategy for YEF Uganda. The Committee was tasked to come up with a
draft strategy to be presented to the bigger meeting and thereafter finalized and
integration into the regional sustainability strategy.
7. MONITORING AND EVALUATION
YEF Monitoring and Evaluation functions have been considered an important part of the project.
The project took several initiatives to ensure this component was well integrated in the project
implementation. The project has two full time staff working on the area of Monitoring and
Evaluation; an Evaluation Specialist who is responsible for Component 3 of the project on
Evidence based advocacy but at the same time providing technical support of the overall M&E
aspects of the project. At the regional level there is a Monitoring and Evaluation Officer who is
responsible among other things for the coordination of regional M&E functions of the project.
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7.1 What monitoring and evaluation strategies/mechanisms are in place to ensure that
sustainability is taking place?
Since the project inception there have been concerted efforts in developing and implementing a
number of Monitoring and Evaluation strategies. On top of the activities the project also
developed a number of tools and systems to ensure what is collected with regards to project
progress is well reported and shared with key stakeholders. The following are some of the major
M&E strategies and systems/tools the project has invested on to ensure that the project is well
monitored and evaluated so as to inform stakeholders on the progress of the project as well as
performance against the set targets;












A Monitoring and Evaluation Plan
Strategy Maps (Annex)
Semi-Annual and Annual Reporting
Quarterly updating of output and outcome indicators (Scorecard) (Annex )
Monitoring Visits to the project intervention areas and partners
Case studies/success stories collection (both written and videos)
Impact Evaluations (Randomized Control Trials)
Impact surveys
Tracer studies
NAC
Entrepreneurs Database
Evaluation Clinics
In the course of the project implementation reports, all the above strategies have been
generated regularly and shared by either communication through National Advisory
Committees, Annual and Semi-Annual Reports and Knowledge sharing meetings. The
information generated from the above mechanisms/tools used as a gauge to provide feedback
to management and other stakeholders on the progress of the project implementation in
achieving its results, lessons learnt best practices and challenges encountered for decision
making. Furthermore the project is planning to conduct a regional knowledge sharing meeting
that will bring together the main key project partners, stakeholders, beneficiaries as well as
other ILO projects to share their experiences working with the project, results achieved over the
last 4 years and good practices. This will also serve as an opportunity for stakeholder buy-in, to
take forward and sustain already established structures and mechanisms in promoting the youth
employment agenda in East Africa.
7.2 What can the project focus on the remaining 1.5 years to support sustainability?
Building on the efforts applied so far, the project is also very keen to ensure some if not all of
the M&E mechanisms are sustained by the already established structures as well as partners.
The planned mechanisms, of which some have already started, are:


Capacity building of project stakeholders on areas of M&E,
Developing a robust M&E system for entrepreneurship education curriculum in Tanzania
and Uganda,
65





Institutionalizing M&E database for storing and tracking potential and existing
entrepreneurs information and handover to the countries’ NAC,
Corroboratively conduct impact surveys and other monitoring activities with partners,
Developing on-line community of practice platform for YEF stakeholders and partners,
Assist in developing KNN Apprentice Program Alumni/TAP BDS effective M&E system,
Conduct a Regional knowledge sharing meeting,
7.3 What are the indicators of sustainability?
Indicators are used to track and measure progress toward the achievement of the desired goal.
Throughout its implementation YEF has been guided by a number of indicators established
during phase I of the project implementation and further reviewed in phase II. These indicators
are component specific i.e. they have been developed with respect to each component/outcome
of the project and they have been updated on a regular basis. It feels crucial to keep the key
indicators to track the sustainability of activities and outcomes promoted by YEF. It is worth
noting that these indicators are based on the YEF team suggestions but will be subject to
partner’s approval during National Advisory Committee meetings in specific countries before
endorsement of the overall sustainability strategy. Their endorsement of the indicators is
essential given that they are the ones who will be spearheading the strategy and in charge of
measuring its achievement accordingly. The following are some of the proposed sustainability
indicators;
Type of Indicator
Indicator
Overall indicators
Youth unemployment rate
National Youth Funds established
Component
towards
I:
Improved
entrepreneurship
attitudes
among
young women and men
Number institutions/
partnerships established for promoting entrepreneurship
culture
Number of youth entrepreneurship award schemes
established
Component II: The education system
Number of students graduating with entrepreneurship
produces
being one of their subject
more
entrepreneurial
graduates
Number
of
schools
and
colleges
teaching
entrepreneurship
Percentage
of
post-school
youth
engaging
in
entrepreneurship activities
Component
Advocacy
III:
Evidence
Based
Youth employment policy recommendations/programmes
drafted using evaluation evidence
Number impact evaluations initiated by partner institutions
66
and other YEF beneficiaries
Component IV: Youth organisations
Number of organisations (CSOs, NGOs, CBOs) promoting
deliver
youth entrepreneurship
innovative
entrepreneurship
solutions
Extent of partner organisations incorporating youth
agenda in their programs
Number
of
donors
supporting
youth
entrepreneurship/initiatives
Component V: Business Development
Number of BDS providers certified annually
Services and Access to Finance
Number of new BDS products developed which focus on
youth
Number of linkages developed with financial institution
7.4 Sustainability Indicators
The core indicators that contribute to sustainability vary from sector to sector. For the economic
sector projects, the core indicator will be economic and financial returns, whereas, the main
indicator for social sector projects will be the extent and degree to which the delivery of goods
and services, have been continued and the proportion of target area population that continue to
receive the benefits from project activities.
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References
Bamberger, M. and Cheema, S. (1990). Case Studies of Project Sustainability,
Implications for Policy and Operations from Asian Experience. The World Bank,
Washington D.C. 1990.
Khan, M. Adil (1993). "Managing Project Sustainability: Key concepts and Issues in
Development Administration", in Asia-Pacific Journal of Rural Development.
CIRDAP. Dhaka. 1993 Spring issue.
Khan, M.Adil, Western J. and Hossain, þ (1992) Sustainability of Social Sector
Projects: The Asian Experience. The World Bank. Washington D.C. 1992
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ANNEXES
ANNEX 1
About the Kazi Nje Nje (KNN) programme
KNN is an integrated, competition based, and youth-led entrepreneurship and selfemployment creation program designed, piloted and promoted by ILO Tanzania as part
of entrepreneurship culture promotion effort through YEF project.
Elements of KNN program:
◦ KNN BDS apprenticeship program
◦ Stakeholders (Government and Non-Government) mobilization process
◦ Youth Mobilization process
◦ Improved SIYB marketing and promotion Cycle
◦ BDS associations development
KNN BDS apprenticeship program is a one year apprenticeship program implemented by
ILO/YEF for the purpose of providing practical exposure, capacity building, and
professional development opportunity for aspiring young professional BDS providers.
KNN Stages:
Stage 1: Preliminaries – 1 – 2 months Recruitment process
Stage 2: First 15days intensive center based training
Stage 3: 9 – 10 months supervised field work
Stage 4: Final 7 days Advanced Consulting skills training
Stage 5: Six days SIYB refresher (with a focus on IYB)
Stage 6: 1 day Graduation Ceremony
Who is a KNN BDS Apprentice
Someone who makes self-employment creation easier for his/her peers – a true role
model – a turning point for others
Self-employment creation champions who when they graduate from KNN program
should be capable of helping his/her fellow youth realize their potentials, opportunities
surrounding them, and what it takes to benefit from them.
Have a cooperative/collaborative attitude and are willing to act as a connector between
different stakeholders for the benefit of young people.
 KNN Stakeholder Mobilization process is presented below:
69
i
Realizing the Potential of Africa’s Youth, Report of the Africa Commission – May 2009
Sustainable Enterprises
iii
Towards a sustainable market exchange for youth entrepreneurship support services in Eastern Africa.
iviv
Best Practices for Donor intervention in Business Development Services provision for Small and Medium Sized
Enterprises
v
The then Prime Minister of Denmark
ii
70
ANNEX 2
THE PROPOSED ROLE OF IMPLEMENTING PARTNERS IN THE AREAS OF TECHNICAL,
INSTITUTIONAL AND FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY
Dimension
Knowledge
Technical
Institutional
Financial
Responsible
Sustainability
Sustainability
Sustainability
Organization



Partners are
Implementing partner
organizations
Focus on human
Mainstream
generation,
resource skills,
use of impact
willing to
dissemination
knowledge and
evaluation
invest in
and use
attitude towards
techniques
impact
Evaluation partner
evidence production
among local
evaluations,
organizations
through impact
partners
by training
Strengthen
staff and/or
YEF stakeholders,
Accessibility of
capacity of
providing in-
including governments
materials on
partner
kind support
evaluation methods
organizations to
for evaluation
and results
conduct and/or
of their
Connection between
commission
programs
evaluation partners,
impact
implementing partners
evaluations and
willing to
and YEF stakeholders
use the
fund-raise
(for joint fundraising,
evidence
and mobilize
working on IEs,
produced
resources to
Partners
conduct
disseminate
impact
evaluation
evaluations
evaluations


dissemination)


knowledge


Partners are
Donors are
willing to
invest in
good quality
evaluation
proposals
developed by
local partners
71