By Allieu Sahid Tunkara
The United Nations Secretary General last week hosted a landmark post-Ebola recovery conference in New York aimed at charting the way forward for the countries hardest hit by the epidemic.
According to UN officials, the Post Ebola Recovery Plan, targeting Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, has seven components, key among which is youth development.
Even before Ebola, Sierra Leone has had a high youth unemployment burden. The Ebola only aggravated the plight of the youth in a country where they account for one third of the population, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The government and development partners such as the UNDP have designed a number of youth development programmes aimed at easing a problem which has translated into high prevalence of drug abuse and consequent increase in crime rate, among other societal menaces.
A pioneering project, with funding and technical support from the UNDP, is already setting the pace. It involves the training of youths in business management skills and entrepreneurship.
Over 8, 000 youths across the country have been trained in Business Development Centres (BDS) situated at Newton in the Western Rural District, Makeni in the north, Kenema in the east, Bo in the south, and the capital Freetown. The centers are run by five different non-governmental organizations in each of the regions - Restless Development (Newtown), African Foundation For Development (Makeni), Advocacy Initiative for Development Sierra Leone (Freetown), Community Empowerment for Peace and Agricultural Development (Kenema), and Hand Empowering the Less Privilege ( Bo).
The project is a subset of the youth empowerment project of the National Youth Commission, commenced in 2012. And since then over 4, 000 youths who have gone through it now own and run businesses and over 3, 400 youths are now entrepreneurs, while many others have got employment in some public and private sector institutions, according to officials.
Sheku Kamara was until September 2014 a bread seller in the streets of Makeni where, he said, he barely made living. The 24 year old now runs his own briquette manufacturing business. He named it ‘Bombali Waste Management and Energy Saving Store Association.’ It is situated at Makama Road in the city of Makeni.
A briquette is a mixture of organic waste, compressed into a mass of block and generally used as fuel.
More employment
Sheku spent six months at the Makeni BDS, enrolling on September 8, 2013, completing on February 3rd, 2014.
The budding entrepreneur said he specialized on how to transform waste, a growing problem in Sierra Leone, from coconut shells, sticks, boards, among others, into briquette.
Like for most parts of Sierra Leone, charcoal and fire wood are the most popular source of fuel for household use such as cooking and other energy needs.
The composition of the briquettes varies from region to region, influenced by the availability of the raw materials. It can be made up of coal dust, sawdust and other combustible biomass material like wood chips, peat, or even paper. The composition can also include rice husk, ground nut shells, municipal solid waste, and other agricultural waste.
Biomass briquettes are a good substitute for fossil fuels such as oil or coal in industrialized environment, where they are commonly used for electricity generation and heating. This way it`s environmentally friendly in that as a renewable source of energy it avoids adding fossil carbon to the atmosphere.
Briquettes are different from charcoal because they do not have large concentrations of carbonaceous substances. Compared to fossil fuels, they produce low net total greenhouse gas emissions because the materials used are already a part of the carbon cycle.
Even for those who insist on using firewood or charcoal for cooking, as is predominant in Sierra Leone, briquette is good for kindling to start a fire. Studies have shown that exposure to smoke as served as a major source of indoor pollution, women being the most at risk.
Briquette therefore comes in handy not just in terms of safeguarding the environment, thereby preventing deforestation, another worrying phenomenon for the country, but also by removing the burden of a major source of indoor pollution in Sierra Leone.
No surprises therefore that Sheku`s business has grown popular within a short period of time.
“I sell 200kg a day, which amount to more than Le 250, 000,’’ he said.
The growing demand for his product meant he has had to bring in more hands, meaning employment for eight more people.
This way the Bombali Waste Management and Energy Saving Store Association has become a training center. Sheku`s BDS experience prepared him for the income and expenditure sides of the business, so that he prepares a proper records keeping, a fundamental aspect of a good business.
As in all businesses, especially true to Sierra Leone, Sheku laments challenges related to transportation difficulties. This, he said, was compounded by the Ebola epidemic and which has affected his cash flow.
Nonetheless he is determined to stay in the business with an ambition of expanding in the near future.
Electricity transfer
In Tombo, few kilometers outside Waterloo, Mballu Daboh, 30, hopes to build a business empire some day out of her electricity transfer business. She joined hands with a few of her colleagues after completing a nine-month long course in Business Management at the Newton BDS, outside Waterloo.
With a 15 KV generator, Mballu and her colleagues transfer light to various households in the community. The group had the advantage of a Le 6, 500, 000 start-up capital as a rewarded for completing the best business.
Every BDS organizes a competition for best business plan after every training course and the winners are provided with reasonable financial resources to start their business.
Mballu explained that they initially received the sum of Le2, 000, 000 as a set up cost and later got 3, 000, 000, and the balance was later deposited into their business bank account at Eco bank.
The business in Tombo town in the Western area, located approximately 10 kilometres from Freetown, has since established a large clientele base.
“I make more than 500, 000 per day and during festive occasions I make more than Le 700, 000 a day. I realise reasonable profit in this business,” Mballu told Politico.
In an effort to supplement the income she makes from the electricity transfer business, she runs a small cosmetics shop nearby, which has placed her at a competitive advantage among her colleague businesswomen in the town.
‘’Before this time, I was just running business without any Knowledge of record keeping, but since I left the Newton BDS, I can now successfully run a business because I have sound knowledge of financial records,’’ she said.
Alinah Kallon, the Programme Manager of the Makeni BDS, said over 1000 youths have gone through the training since August 2012 when the center began operation. The youths are trained on business skills and computer literacy, she said.
‘’Since the establishment of the centre, over 1000 youths have graduated and other students are on the verge of entering,’’ she said. She explained that one must have a business idea as one of the main criteria for eligibility to be enrolled.
Kallon said through this initiative they have made significant impact on entrepreneurship and access to employment opportunities, among the youths. She noted that while some of the graduates had gained employment with Airtel Company, others had found their way into some other areas of work.
‘’Although owning businesses is the main aim of the training project, if the graduates take other employment facilities, it is an addition,’’ she said.
She urged the donors to consider extending the project to remote areas where more youths remain idle.
Opportunities
The youth population, aged 15-35, comprises one third of the population of Sierra Leone and youth unemployment was a major root cause of the outbreak of civil conflict in Sierra Leone, says the UNDP, which estimates that 70% of youth are underemployed or unemployed and an estimated 800,000 youth are actively searching for employment.
Because of this high unemployment rate, a lot of youths have taken to petty trading, thus necessitating the need for this initiative aimed at equipping them with business and entrepreneurial skills for self-employment opportunities, said Antony Alimamy Koroma, Chairman of the National Youth Commission.
The scheme is also a fulfillment of the contents of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Commission and the UNDP aimed at supporting relevant NGOs to deliver the training, Koroma said.
“We have graduates providing services in electricity, bike riding, fishing etc. We target on annual basis 1, 200 and an average of 200 and 250 for a centre,’’ he said.
Koroma said the project`s popularity is illustrated in the high demand for enrollment among youths, revealing that every year over 4,000 youths apply.
These interviews were done ahead of the just concluded UN Ebola Recovery conference.
In this regard, the head of programmes at the UNDP in Freetown, Lionel Laurens, said the conference, in addition to exploring ways of soliciting the required resources to ensure that the countries get to zero new Ebola cases, would pave the way for the leaders of the three hardest hit countries to present their post Ebola recovery plans, key among which would target the youth segment of society.
The UNDP funded youth employment project serves as a complementary scheme to whatever projects that will born out of these development plans. The UN agency says the initiative, designed to create opportunities for the unemployed youths, has two facets bordering on institutional capacity building and improvement of the livelihoods of the youths.
UNDP provides both financial and technical support to the project.
It says it allocates US$100, 000 to each training centre per year.
Although it has been ongoing long before Ebola struck, UNDP officials say the project is well positioned to boost Sierra Leone`s recovery effort.
Part of the plan is to target 25, 000 more youths within the next three years for training, mentoring and support to access start-up funds.
Apart from this financial assistance, said Molla Alemu, UNDP Programme Manager for youth empowerment, the technical support entails hiring international staff with good success stories to lecture in the centres.
“I want to see young Sierra Leoneans meeting their basic needs, taking the development and be goal-oriented,’’ Alemu told Politico.
(C) Politico 14/07/15
