Kefeta project: Lessons in integrated youth empowerment

Young people are key drivers for change and have an important and active role in shaping and addressing global issues. Therefore, the involvement of the youth in global, continental and national economic, political and social issues is inevitable. In fact, in recent years, the youth has been the focus of discussions and planning of transnational and national policies and strategies.

For example, the youth is at the centre of the joint Africa and European Union strategic partnership. In relation to this, it is important to recall the central theme of the fifth African Union-European Union Summit, namely investing in the youth for a sustainable future. It was held on 29-30 November 2017 in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

The African Union also focused on ‘Harnessing the Demographic Dividend through Investments in Youth’ as its theme of that year.

Meanwhile, African countries have been developing youth policies and Ethiopia is one of them. The Ethiopian National Youth Policy was adopted in 2004 with the purpose of enabling the “youth to be citizens with a democratic outlook, professional competence, skill(s) and ethics so that they can actively, efficiently and widely participate in and benefit from the country’s ongoing activities that are aimed at attaining a democratic system and accelerated development”.

There are also projects that have been developed by the government and-or development partners in many developing countries that aim to address the needs of the youth.

Most of these projects have been implemented through a piecemeal approach and projects in Ethiopia that target youth groups are no different.

Reports indicate that an integrated approach is more effective in achieving the objectives of a project. Complementing this thought, in 2015 the World Bank introduced integration as a new approach to youth employment programmes.

Integrated youth activity

In Ethiopia, USAID has recently funded an Integrated Youth Activity programme with Amref Health Africa as the implementation lead. The Integrated Youth Activity programme, which is referred to as the ‘Kefeta’ (meaning ‘to elevate’ in Amharic) project, is a five-year multisector initiative with the goal of empowering Ethiopian youth to own, lead, manage and advance their own social, educational, economic and civic development.

Higher education is one of the sectors involved in the project and university as well as technical and vocational education and training (TVET) college students are among the main target groups of the youth programme.

One of the strategies used by the Kefeta project is informing programme interventions based on a sound and comprehensive needs analysis, which helped to understand the context, institutional landscape and constraints to and opportunities for integrated youth activities.

The project could also be considered as unique and innovative in the way that it aims to use an integrated approach and ensure sustainability of different activities after the lifespan of the project.

Integrated approach in higher education

In the higher education sector, the Kefeta project aims to improve student employability, civic engagement, social and economic development and health.

To achieve this objective, the project has developed integrated activities which include providing needs-based employability training, ensuring active youth engagement and providing sexual and reproductive health services.

Another activity is the establishment of a youth coalition. The youth coalition is “a permanent platform for youth to network and collectively advocate for their rights, amplifying their voices and fortifying their actions”. The coalition will involve different, new and existing interest groups in higher education, schools, workplaces and out-of-school settings.

Students will also have an opportunity to participate in contributing to the mission and vision of the youth coalition, which is one of the major intervention areas of the project.

The project involves local civil society organisations, private companies and international partners, such as Arizona State University, Johns Hopkins University and the International Youth Foundation, as implementing partners.

The partners are drawn from different sectors, including higher education, health and youth, and have existing profiles, expertise and experience at national and-or international levels.

Government offices at both federal and regional levels are also actively engaged and facilitate the implementation of the integrated youth activities in their respective sectors.

Any challenges?

There are several instances in which national and international development partners have found it difficult to work with public universities.

Some of the challenges that partners face while working with public universities include, but are not limited to, the lack of active engagement, unnecessary bureaucracy and staff turnover. The other major challenge is that some projects do not involve key stakeholders, mainly end-users.

The Kefeta project is well aware of these and has developed different strategies that help to overcome or minimise challenges that hinder effective project implementation.

One of the strategies is involving youth, youth-led organisations and key stakeholders in the process of project development. It actively engages key stakeholders in the development and implementation of different activities.

For example, the project used a co-development approach in designing and establishing a higher education alliance, which is an organisational advocacy and learning platform that will include public universities as well as TVET institutions from across Ethiopia.

The co-development involved major stakeholders, including career centre directors, gender office directors, student union representatives, and representatives of students with disabilities.

The approach used to address potential challenges involves the ministry of education and the ministry of labour and skills to facilitate and oversee project implementation.

Kefeta is not the only project that aims to work on employability and skills related issues. Other organisations such as the World Bank, the Mastercard Foundation, the International Labour Organization and the International Growth Centre are also engaged in addressing similar issues in Ethiopia.

But there is a lack of mapping that clearly shows their focus, expertise and target groups and geographic coverage.

The lack of coordination between different organisations could potentially result in the duplication of efforts and unnecessary pressure on beneficiary institutions. To address this challenge despite its limited capacity, Kefeta aims to have a discussion with some of the above-mentioned organisations, mainly to avoid duplication.

Monitoring and evaluation are another challenging aspect of the integrated youth activity implementation approach. To cope with this challenge, the project needs to develop a framework and tools that enable a smooth follow-up, coordination, review and effective impact assessment.

Lessons learnt have to be well recorded and shared to help improve implementation and share experiences with other sectors.

High expectations

Beneficiaries have high expectations regarding the opportunities the Kefeta project offers, some of which goes beyond the scope and aims of the project. Therefore, Kefeta and its implementing partners need to develop a strategy that helps to manage impractical expectations.

There are also high expectations among implementing partners on the impact of the integrated approach.

The assumption is that Kefeta’s successes will lead to adapting, and applying, an integrated approach in the implementation of various projects, which will incorporate the different issues a particular group or entity faces.

Dr Abebaw Yirga Adamu is an associate professor of higher education at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. He was director of the Ethiopian Institute for Higher Education, a Global Dialogue fellow of NAFSA: Association of International Educators (2019-21), and International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX) university administration support programme research management fellow. He can be contacted at abebaw.yirga@aau.edu.et.