Last week’s article showed that youth economic participation in Zambia continues to be constrained by weak pathways into productive livelihoods. It argued that limited labour absorption, restricted access to productive resources, low levels of skills development, and persistent mismatches between skills and available jobs have undermined school-skills-income pathways for many young people. This week’s article turns to practical approaches for strengthening those pathways.

Rebalancing Skills and Education Systems
One feasible approach to improving skills and education is to rebalance the skills and education systems themselves. Zambia has historically placed emphasis on professional training. This can be indicated by increased expenditure on university and college education, as well as the availability of financial support from the Higher Education Loans and Scholarships Board (HELSB) for university education. There is a need to place similar emphasis on skills training. Skills training aligned to evolving labour market and enterprise demands is critical both for reducing skills mismatches and for equipping young people with practical capabilities that can support self-employment, enterprise development, and broader economic participation.

While efforts to support skills training through the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) Skills Development Bursaries are commendable, they are insufficient to meet the demand for such support. There is a need to explore further options, including extending the HELSB loan scheme to students pursuing Technical Education, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training (TEVET). This can even be on a bursary basis to stimulate uptake, given the lower cost of TEVET and skills training as compared to university education. Similar facilities, such as South Africa’s National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), provide financial support to disadvantaged students pursuing higher education at both universities and TEVET colleges.

Strengthening Youth Enterprise Pathways
Another approach to improving youth livelihoods is through strengthened youth enterprise pathways. Many young people in Zambia are engaged in informal owner-operated MSMEs primarily in the agriculture, forestry and fishing, and wholesale and retail trade sectors. The informality and low turnover of many of these enterprises limit their access to key productive resources, such as finance and productive assets. Therefore, for youth enterprises to sufficiently support their owners’ livelihoods and contribute to employment creation, there will be a need to support their formalisation, not only to meet regulatory requirements but most importantly to unlock access to finance and other business-enabling support.

Formalisation is critical because providers of financial support, including private financial institutions and the government through the CDF and the Citizens Economic Empowerment Commission (CEEC), can provide such support only to registered enterprises. Further, there is a need to support the transition of youth-led enterprises from survival to growth-oriented modes, enabling them to increase their turnover, expand and generate sustainable incomes and employment opportunities for others. This will require targeted and sustained business development support through interventions such as training and mentorship.

Improving Empowerment Programme Design
Improving the design, integration, and scale of empowerment initiatives is also critical to strengthening youth livelihoods. Many youth empowerment interventions exist across several ministries, agencies, and programmes, including CDF skills and empowerment initiatives, CEEC empowerment financing programmes, and youth enterprise support interventions under the Ministry of Youth, Sport and Arts. These, however, remain fragmented, siloed, short-term, and overly focused on disbursement rather than on the long-term sustainability of the enterprises and individuals they support. Strengthening youth livelihoods requires better-coordinated empowerment programmes that leverage multisectoral support and are deliberately linked to mentorship, market access, and business development services. Monitoring and evaluation of interventions are also critical to ensuring that initiatives are working as intended and supporting long-term enterprise growth, viability, and employment creation.

Multi-Stakeholder Coordination and Structural Inclusion
Further, the approaches highlighted above require a multi-stakeholder framework and partnerships that bring together the government, training institutions, the private sector, development partners, and civil society to support improved youth livelihoods. The need for multi-stakeholder-driven and integrated interventions cannot be overemphasised. More broadly, improving Zambia’s capacity to absorb labour into productive activities will also require strengthening linkages between primary production in sectors such as agriculture and mining and downstream activities such as value addition. Stronger linkages can help expand employment opportunities for Zambia’s growing youth population.

In conclusion, providing clear school-skills-income pathways for Zambia’s young people requires several interventions. This article has proposed that strengthening youth livelihoods requires rebalancing skills and education systems, strengthening youth enterprise pathways, improving the design of empowerment programmes, and enhancing multistakeholder coordination and structural inclusion. Zambia’s youth challenge is ultimately a challenge of productive inclusion. Sustainable progress will depend not only on creating opportunities but on building coherent systems that enable young people to transition from school into productive and resilient livelihoods. Improved youth employment, livelihoods and income pathways are critical because young people are central to broader economic transformation.

Author:
Mukuka Chilalika is Fundraising and Partnership Lead at the Centre for Trade Policy and Development (CTPD). He holds a BSc in Agricultural Economics and is currently pursuing an MSc in Agricultural Economics. His interests include agricultural policy, rural livelihoods, and economic development.