Key information
Main city: Freetown, Sierra Leone.
Bo, Kailahun and Kono districts (Sierre Leone second-level units of administration).
Scope: City/town level; National level
Lead organisations: International Organisation for Migration (IOM) Sierra Leone
Timeframe: 2019 – 2022
Themes: Youth and capability development; Education and skills; Gender; Industry and trade; Informality; Migration
Total budget: USD 4.2 million. Funding sources: Government of Japan.
Approaches used in initiative design and implementation:
- Integration of youth in training and capacity development.
- Objective-oriented: driven by objectives set at the beginning of the project.
- Partnerships: fostering partnerships with the municipality as well as private sector actors to maximise long-term outcomes for beneficiaries.
Initiative description
Background and context
Irregular migration out of Sierra Leone, which often consists of transnational movement outside the law, has been identified as a particular problem that disproportionately concerns youth. Despite many initiatives aimed at dissuading young people from embarking on dangerous transnational routes in search of a better life, many young Sierra Leoneans continue to risk their lives in response to inequality, poverty and unemployment in their homeland.
These issues are particularly pronounced in Freetown, as in many African cities, which represent a meeting point of many of the social and structural obstacles that youth face in improving their lives. The urban experience is particularly challenging for young women, who represent a higher proportion of unemployed youth. This is due to prevailing social norms surrounding gendered spaces of labour as well as issues pertaining to social capital and access. It is within this context that the project described here has been designed and implemented to address the issues raised.
Summary of initiative
This project was designed to address rising irregular youth migration out of Sierra Leone. It took a targeted skills and capacity development approach, to equip young women and men with the skills required to flourish without embarking on migratory pathways abroad.
The initiative targeted youth, understanding that young people form the largest demographic in Sierra Leone, including Freetown. In partnership with government bodies and the private sector, the project focused on equipping youth with the skills required on their path to adulthood and active citizenship.
Led by the UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and financed by the Government of Japan, this project was designed with youth and women in mind, in order to dissuade young Sierra Leoneans from irregular migration. In particular, the objective set out by this project was to promote young people and women’s empowerment by cultivating vocational training and entrepreneurship skills and raising awareness on irregular migration. Being out of school, unemployed and residing in informal settlements in areas of intervention were some of the criteria used to identify young people who were particularly at risk of migrating.
In Freetown, Bo, Kailahun and Kono districts, 419 young entrepreneurs (163 women and 276 men) were supported through this initiative. Of these, 221 (33 women and 188 men) received support in sustainable waste management, in partnership with Freetown City Council and 198 (130 women and 68 men) completed mentored entrepreneurship programmes and received start-up kits or support in expanding their business.
In Freetown, the intervention involved equipping youth with training, support, start-up kits and equipment to expand their existing businesses in retail, tailoring and other activities. Alongside this, the initiative also focused on establishing a partnership with Freetown City Council (FCC), through which young people involved in waste picking received training in sustainable waste management. In total, 21 waste-picking groups were supported through this project. Through the established partnership with the FCC, tricycles were leased to the working groups, who used them to improve their everyday working practices. Alongside the provision of skills aimed at improving team-building and financial management, the results were positive for young waste pickers – improving their working conditions and highlighting the benefits that can be sourced from similar partnerships.
In total, 2,000 young people – of which 700 (35%) were women – were targeted through training and entrepreneurship support throughout Sierra Leone. Outside of the project’s training and entrepreneurial components, over 3.5 million people were targeted through nationwide awareness-raising activities aimed at discouraging youth from irregular migration abroad. This included workshop sessions, focus groups and engagement through mainstream and social media.
Target population, communities, constituents or "beneficiaries"
Targeted population: young people in Sierra Leone (defined by the National Youth Policy as individuals aged between 15 and 35) who were at risk of irregular migration abroad, especially those living in Freetown and districts in other intervention sites throughout Bo, Kailahun and Kono. Benefits they received included: vocational training, entrepreneurship support and participation in awareness-raising activities on irregular migration.
ACRC themes
The following ACRC domains are relevant (links to ACRC domain pages):
- Youth and capability development (primary domain)
- Neighbourhood and district economic development
- Safety and security
- Structural transformation
Youth and capability development: With the centrality of unemployment in the lives of youth in Freetown, this reform initiative highlights the importance of exploring capability development through the lens of structural transformation and vice versa. For this reason, the structural transformation domain is one of the most important in terms of thematic overlap and objectives.
Considering the importance of the spatial elements attached to young people’s training and businesses, neighbourhood and district economic development is also a key domain in highlighting the linkages that living areas and working spaces play in the lives of youth in Freetown.
And, lastly, given that Sierra Leone is a post-conflict society and youth continue to face a variety of issues within a context of ongoing reconciliation as a consequence of the civil war, safety and security has also been identified as an important domain with overlapping priorities.
The following ACRC crosscutting themes are also relevant (links to ACRC domain pages):
Gender
The project design included a particular emphasis on targeting women beneficiaries, with the objective of including at least 30% women, to ensure the intervention addressed the high unemployment rates and irregular migration patterns that disproportionately impact women in Sierra Leone. This included a focus on equipping young women with training skills and challenging gender norms around employment by encouraging young women to engage in employment outside of normative expectations, and raising awareness about the downsides of irregular migration. This was achieved, with women making up over 35% (700 out of 2,000) of beneficiaries, who benefitted specifically from training and entrepreneurial support – including start-up kits for women involved in waste management groups in Freetown.
Finance
The project involved equipping young people with entrepreneurial skills including training around handling money, bookkeeping and building savings within the context of small-scale businesses. This allowed youth to develop managerial capabilities and, in some instances, expand their work beyond the scope of activities impacted by high market competition (such as in retail), and shift towards activities that required more initial capital but offered lucrative long-term returns (opening a café/hair salon, for example).
Climate change
The impacts of climate change on the lives and livelihoods of young Sierra Leoneans were addressed indirectly by equipping young people with skills that built their capacity through sustainable long-term livelihood choices – including being part of Freetown’s waste management system through partnership with the FCC.
What has been learnt?
Effectiveness/success
The success of the initiative was defined around meeting milestones set at the project design level. These concerned delivering vocational training and entrepreneurship support to young people in the intervention areas, and developing an awareness-raising campaign that dissuaded youth from irregular migration.
Another important milestone set by the project related to challenging gender stereotypes around employment. Examples of the outcomes of the project were best captured through case studies of youth who – in the case of waste pickers in Freetown – were able to establish their work through the assistance provided by integrating into the FCC’s broader sustainable urban greening initiatives aimed at greening Freetown. Another example involved a female entrepreneur in Freetown, who was assisted in establishing her hair salon and succeeded in maintaining her business throughout the pandemic as a result of training received through the project. Another notable example from other intervention areas outside the capital city included a female beneficiary who challenged gender norms by training to operate a tractor, subsequently encouraging other women to step outside their comfort zones in exploring other employment opportunities.
This IOM-led initiative focused on addressing issues of access in relation to key urban systems: primarily education, through the delivery of training; waste management, through an emphasis on building and expanding the entrepreneurial potential of youth who earn a living in this sector; and finance, through the delivery of targeted training focused on building and maintaining financial capital. The project also indirectly influenced the development and reform of other interconnected city systems, including energy and transportation, which impact the daily lives of young beneficiaries in Freetown.
Given the scale of the project, part of its success can be attributed to its collaborative design, which included the participation of key government stakeholders – namely the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Freetown City Council – in drawing out priority areas, as well as in the implementation of the initiative itself. This was demonstrated in a number of ways, notably through the communications and PR work attached to the initiative as an example of state commitment to addressing the youth question in Sierra Leone. In Freetown, the initiative’s waste-picking component exemplified how the FCC integrated youth benefitting from the programme – including the waste picking groups that were created – into the council’s longer-term plans. This culminated in the creation in 2021 of a Waste Management Microenterprise Programme, also funded by the IOM.
The success of the initiative was determined on the objectives set out at the onset. This urban reform initiative set out to equip young people – particularly women – with the skills required to develop sustainable livelihoods in a highly competitive urban economy, support their businesses and dissuade those at risk from embarking on irregular migration pathways. Assessed with an acknowledgement of the scale and scope of the project’s objectives, which was concentrated in Freetown but also encompassed areas in rural districts, this initiative can be identified as a success by having met the objectives listed above.
With its design, focused approach and integrated process to ensuring that young people could benefit from the skills they were equipped with, this project can be used as a case study for learning within the context of Sierra Leone, as well as in other African cities. Particularly notable were the support they received for their businesses and the information they had access to through awareness-raising activities. The project showed that strategies devised to escape poverty, as in the case of irregular migration, must be addressed at the local level. Moreover, through a focus on women, the value of women’s labour and the importance of centring women’s capacity development serve as important learning opportunities for other similar initiatives elsewhere.
Understanding limitations
Income inequality in Freetown disproportionately affects young people, many of whom live in informal settlements. As such, many of the systemic failures faced by municipal authorities disproportionately affect youth, who lack adequate access to housing, water and energy, amongst other basic services. This deteriorates their living conditions but also disadvantages their ability to transform their circumstances single-handedly. With this initiative prioritising training and capacity development at an individual level, the development of entrepreneurial capabilities was also marred with difficulties, given the underserviced infrastructural context within which young people in Freetown live.
Challenges faced through the project implementation included the long-term sustainability of individual ventures and the extent to which market assessments needed to be carried out to ensure youth were equipped with skills required by the labour market. These challenges were addressed through planning and targeted mentoring, tailored to individual needs, which resulted in a successful intervention with a limited scope of influence. This outcome served as a good learning opportunity to observe how similar initiatives can be replicated to ensure a wider reach.
Other challenges related to the timing of the project, which coincided with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. This external shock increased the vulnerability of beneficiaries: in relation to young entrepreneurs in Freetown, restrictions impacted the ability of businesses to sustain themselves in an already oversaturated, highly competitive market and necessitated assistance in terms of narrowing spending and planning economically for the future. Youth who required additional support in benefitting from the training offered were provided with guidance and mentorship within the capacity available. Challenges were also faced in addressing gender stereotypes around employment, which were addressed through the successful integration of a number of women into men-dominated sectors (such as waste management in Freetown), who served as examples for their peers and communities.
Potential for scaling and replicating
The potential for replicating the initiative in the Sierra Leonean context has been acknowledged, due to the vast number of potential beneficiaries who were not encompassed by the project, as well as in relation to the successes marked through increasing the long-term prospects of employment amongst youth who were trained and received entrepreneurial support.
Moreover, a number of cases suggested that partnerships formed within the scope of this project – namely with the government agencies (FCC) and private sector entities (STL) – were key to beneficiaries securing employment contracts following the completion of the project. This concerned men and women and cut across the various intervention sites.
Participating agencies
In 2021, a private partnership was established between the IOM and Sierra Tropical Limited (STL), a pineapple producing company with factories located in Bo district, southern Sierra Leone. This partnership is for the integration of programme beneficiaries through training and internship placements.
Further information
Further resources
- Main initiative website
- rodakar.iom.int/stories
- iom.int/news
- rodakar.iom.int/news
- Sierra-leonean-youth-benefit-japan-iom-partnership
- Video: IOM handing over ceremony to youth entrepreneurs with Japanese ambassador and MOYA / MAF ministers (Credit: Kunikazu Akao, IOM Sierra Leone)
Cite this case study as:
Dessie, E (2024). “Technical and vocational education and training: Sierra Leone youth and women empowerment project”. ACRC Urban Reform Database Case Study. Manchester: African Cities Research Consortium, The University of Manchester. Available online.