The Contributions of the Non-Profit Sector to Youth Employment in Ethiopia: A Review of the Literature

The review explored how the role of NPOs aims to address structural barriers, such as limited access to finance, insufficient skills training, and fragmented institutional coordination and individual or group-based business development support systems that hindered the youth from realizing employment and livelihood benefits. The review comprises literature from academic, policy, and program/project intervention spheres. Relevant information was collected from published articles, websites, project/program documents, and monitoring and evaluation databases. The review suggested that NPOs have empowered target beneficiaries with the knowledge and skills needed in the labor market. Trainings were conducted to enhance youth livelihood opportunities, such as employability capacities and effective work habits, business skills, entrepreneurship, and business development supports to unemployed youth identified by youth-focused NPOs. These NPOs also used internships, job fairs, and trainings as drivers to promote wage employment and self-employment. The literature also shows that NPOs enabled target youths to access working capital to run businesses individually and in groups and own household assets. The review concludes that NPOs were effective in empowering youth through creating employment, enhancing entrepreneurial capacities, increasing income, and building business and technical skills at a limited scale in urban contexts. However, the literature failed to provide evidence on whether NPOs were able to make their services accessible to unemployed youth in conflict areas, IDP camps, and rural hinterlands.