Youth Employment Programs - Independent Evaluation Group

In post-conflict zones with small formal sectors, the Bank is supportingbusiness training for young ex-combatants, thereby helping local businessdevelopment. In Sierra Leone, the Bank is providing technical training,business development support, coaching, and other life skills trainingto 1,500 youth—among them ex-combatants—who already have amicroenterprise or who are interested in self-employment. In Côte d’Ivoire,the Bank’s self-employment program, which includes entrepreneurshipdevelopment services, counseling, job placement service, training, start-upgrants, and public works, has reached more than 16,700 youth-at-risk and excombatantsduring the first three years; however, no employment effect hasbeen reported. In Eritrea, Bank support to a non-agriculture business trainingprogram trained 973 demobilized soldiers, 65 percent of them women; andprovided business training and access to credit to 612 ex-soldiers. Theeconomic participation rate of soldiers was high at 85 percent, and higherfor males (91 percent) than for females (74 percent). About 80 percent of exsoldiersearned enough income from one job to survive.IFC’s linkage and supply chain programs account for its most comprehensiveeffort to create jobs, develop SMEs, and support entrepreneurship throughpackages of interventions including training, finance, and supplierdevelopment. For instance, in 2006, IFC supported a linkage program inparallel to its investment in an energy company in India. The goal of theprogram was to use IFC investment in the client company as a catalyst topromote economic and social development of an economically backwardregion—Barmer District, (in Rajasthan, India). One of the components ofthe project was to provide skills and employment opportunities to ruralcommunities, including youth. An entrepreneurship center was created, andyouth were trained and matched with enterprises. In total, 4,174 jobs werecreated and $1,743,802 in sales revenue was generated.IFC supported a few projects that sought to provide opportunities to youthentrepreneurs, mostly through the Grassroots Business Initiative, and morerecently through Business Edge, Yemen. For example, a Grassroots businessproject sought to bring together leading business people in Indonesia andMali to share their expertise, knowledge, networks, and financial resourcesto assist young, small-scale, social entrepreneurs in their communities. Theproject faced two challenges. First, in Indonesia large business partners madeno investment in assisting SMEs run by youth. Second, the project was unableto develop a good pipeline of projects that could combine both businessopportunities and grassroots benefits.In a multi-country project, IFC supported a loan and technical assistancefacility to provide the informal/young start-up micro-entrepreneurs withfirst-time access to financial markets. However, weak project design, loanproduct and selection criteria for the beneficiaries resulted in the project notmeeting its objectives. Overall, these projects were not fully aligned with IFC’soperational business model and the experience indicates that these types ofprojects are challenging to design and implement.142 Youth Employment Programs