Pius Bigirimana, the permanent secretary, ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, is on a mission to ensure the Youth Livelihood Programme (YLP) funds get to all legible youth effortlessly.
Speaking to this website on how the youth can benefit from the 125 billion Youth Livelihoods Programme (YLP), Bigirimana said assessment of the YLP programme where so far over 85 billion shillings has been disbursed is on the right course.
“78% of Uganda’s population is below 30 years and actually 57% below 18 years and 21.3% between the ages of 18 and 30 years. Our interventions to enable the country benefit from these big numbers is create opportunities for them to access funds for investment. The YLP is one such fund” Bigirimana says
How the YLP programme works
- Under the new programme, each youth project is allocated upto 12.21 million which is only paid back after it has generated profits equivalent to the loan initially advanced to a particular youth group.
- Youth groups whose member ship is between 10-15 members is targeted and beneficiary selection is conducted through the community mechanism in sub counties. Atleast 30% of the members have to be female.
- For any youth to access the funds, it must atleast have a physical address, a three year’s work plan and projected cassh flow, and must have an account with a re-organised commercial bank.
- Funding is available to the youth to re-invest in various sectors and economic activities including bakery, video-audio editing, dairy production, poultry, piggery, improved goats, carpentry, bicycle repair, shoe making/,repair, metal-fabrication, honey production, post-harvesting handling, among other income generating ventures.
- The funds are disbursed directly from the district youth livelihoods programme account to individual youth project accounts managed by youth management committees.
- The programme is monitored by the Inspectorate of Government to ensure accountability and transparency.
Bigirimana attributes the success of YLP to massive sensitization, transparency and accountability by his ministry.
