Report

Skills Landscape and Sustainability of Youth-led Business Establishments in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

Youth unemployment has become the biggest development challenge in Tanzania. Young people have few opportunities to learn skills from to help them start and sustain their established micro and small enterprises and, therefore, the majority of youth owned enterprises do not survive beyond one year. This research aimed at assessing the youth skills landscape and its role in enhancing sustainability of youth-led business establishments in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. An enterprise survey was conducted where 274 micro and small-scale enterprises were randomly selected and interviewed. Business sustainability was measured using the working capital turnover which was then clustered to get the business sustainability status. The logistic model was used in determining the influence of skills to the sustainability of micro and small-scale businesses. The results revealed that communications skills, business plan skills, attending the professional training and gender of the business owner had significant effect on business sustainability. The findings show that most of the skills are informally acquired from either internships or volunteering, while few of them (11.6%) got the business skills from formal vocational training (VETA). The study recommends that youth should be encouraged to undergo formal trainings for acquisition of business skills to be equipped with proper business skills for sustenance of their business. It is recommended also that the government should re-establish the technical and vocational training centers at a district level as was the case before.