On an August morning, at a festival ground less than an hour from Uganda’s capital city of Kampala, banners touting agribusinesses bent in the breeze across from a small stage. There, a young group of grass-skirted performers danced and sang, a youth brass band blared its horns, and a circus troupe performed acrobatics to the cheers of a crowd largely made of dignitaries working on youth issues.

The International Labour Organization has charted a rise in youth without jobs, from 13.3 percent in 2013 to 18.6 percent in 2015.

The performances were part of a celebration to mark the official launch of a new initiative to tackle one of Uganda’s great challenges — youth unemployment.

Uganda is one of the youngest countries in the world, and hundreds of thousands of youth enter the job market each year. As is often the case, the statistics don’t paint the full picture, with more than 90 percent of  youth informally employed, while many are working limited hours or left uncounted. There are a host of barriers to employment, but part of the problem is a general lack of jobs. And so the country, and a growing number of nongovernmental organizations, are looking to entrepreneurship to help solve the problem.

Read the full article on youth unemployment in Uganda by Adva Saldinger at Devex International Development