The youth in Ethiopia are estimated to constitute 30% of the population. Around 81% of them lived in rural areas, and 98% of the rural youth depended on the agriculture sector in 2016. Through generations, most of the youth in rural Ethiopia have been sharing the same land with their parents and other adults. As a result, the land size available to youth is becoming increasingly insufficient. Moreover, the youth are the hardest hit by poverty, the highest unemployed groups of the society, and the number of youth job seekers is increasing overtime. For instance, 1.52 million job seekers were registered in rural areas in eight regions in late 2018. Employment opportunities have been very limited in rural Ethiopia because of lack of complementary investments and poor access to finance and land. These unfavorable conditions have been contributing to the unabating rural-urban migration and migration abroad. In a bid to ameliorate rural unemployment and underemployment problems, the Ethiopian government recently started developing youth employment initiatives, packages and policies. This paper aims to document four of the major interventions, particularly for rural youth.

Published as FARA Research Report Volume 5 No: 4 (2020).