Unemployed youth and self-employment in Botswana

Abstract

This research attempts to understand why many unemployed young people are not entering self-employment in Botswana as well as actual youth trajectories to self-employment. It is based on the analysis of documentary sources, focus groups and interviews with young people, both unemployed and self-employed, and officials in Mogoditshane and Gaborone. Interviews with young people constitute the main data source while others are complementary. The study found that the prior experience of a job that has provided training is often the route into self-employment, and that many unemployed young people do not consider it feasible to move to self-employment from unemployment. But at the same time they are not willing to stay in unskilled, risky, low-paid and insecure employment that does not provide decent work. It challenges policy makers to ponder strategies towards the creation of decent employment, training, wage employment, work experience and self-employment and their inter-linkages as a way of addressing youth unemployment in Botswana. The study suggests how self-employment constraints can be reduced to provide a more enabling environment.