In 2025

Testimonials

Title: Strengthening Enterprises through Business Development Service (BDS) and Quality and Productivity Improvement (KAIZEN)

Focus Area: Economic Growth and Trade | Youth Employment | Skills Development.

Aligned SDGs

Target: Micro, Small, and Medium Scale Enterprises across the United Republic of Tanzania (Tanzania mainland and Zanzibar).

Location: Arusha, Kilimanjaro, Morogoro, Dar Es Salaam, Dodoma, Singida, Mbeya, and Mwanza.

Duration: 2024 to 2027.

Description: The government of Tanzania, through the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MIT), is implementing a project on “Strengthening Enterprises through Business Development Service (BDS) and Quality and Productivity Improvement (KAIZEN)”. The JICA funds this project.

Project Summary

Overall goal: Nationally based BDS/KAIZEN consulting will enhance the competitiveness of Tanzanian Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).

Project purpose: A sustainable mechanism for adopting BDS/KAIZEN to promote MSMEs by MIIT/TKU, SIDO, CBE, MTID and SMIDA is strengthened with structured evidence.

Outputs:

1. Skilled human resources for providing BDS/KAIZEN consulting are imparted.
2. The provision of BDS/KAIZEN consulting through MIIT/TKU, SIDO, CBE, MTID and SMIDA is improved.
3. The coordination and networking for the awareness promotion of BDS and KAIZEN is enhanced.
4. The recognition by the government and MSMEs of the benefits of the provision of BDS/KAIZEN consulting is improved.

In 2024

Testimonials

Title: Skills in Sustainable Fish Farming and Entrepreneurship. 

Focus Area: Youth Employment | Skills Development | Agriculture & Food Security | Environment and Climate Change

Aligned SDGs

Target: 170 youth aged between 15-24 who are unemployed or self-employed, earning TZS 150,000 or less per month, equivalent to approximately 2 US$ per day.  

Location: Mvomero district council in Mlali and Mzumbe wards.

Description: The Skills for Employment Tanzania (SET) project is financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) through the Swiss Embassy in Tanzania. YPO co-implemented this project with Swisscontact to improve vocational skills development (VSD) in Tanzania and increase employment prospects for youth.

Project Summary

Our training concepts:

Our approach, “Training while Working,” aims to establish self-employment fish farms and fish processing units for the youth in the Morogoro region. The approach will provide essential skills and create viable employment opportunities and livelihoods for youth.

Concept overview:

The training is a practical strategy to offer young people hands-on skills and experience from pond construction to fish processing. This real-life environment ensures that youth gain practical expertise in fish farming, including farm management, stocking, harvesting, fish feed production and market access to prepare them for real-world challenges. Following the technical training, trainees will transition to the incubation phase (self-employment, fish farms and fish processing units). During this phase, mentorship programs will be implemented to provide ongoing guidance, support, practical work experience, and problem-solving assistance, ensuring a smooth transition to self-employment. 

Supportive transition:

The self-employment fish farms serve as a supportive bridge, addressing common challenges/barriers faced by trained youths operating their fish farms. They provide access to affordable quality inputs (fingerlings and fish feed), essential infrastructure (pumps, pipes), compliance assistance with government requirements, advisory services throughout the fish growth phases, and market access for fish production.

Sustainability model:

The self-employment fish farms will engage in commercial activities, producing, feeding, and processing fish. The income generated from these activities will contribute to the program’s sustainability, ensuring its continued impact.

In 2023

Testimonials

Title: Enhancing Youth Employment and Self-Employment through Fish Farming and Processing.

Focus Area: Youth Employment | Skills Development | Agriculture & Food Security

Aligned SDGs:

Target: 100 youth aged between 15-24 who are unemployed or self-employed, earning TZS 150,000 or less per month, equivalent to approximately 2 US$ per day.  

Location: Morogoro municipality in Mkundi, Lukobe, Kingolwira, Mazimbu, Mlimani, Magadu, Kauzeni and Mzinga wards.

Description: The Skills for Employment Tanzania (SET) project is financed by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) through the Swiss Embassy in Tanzania. YPO co-implemented this project with Swisscontact to improve vocational skills development (VSD) in Tanzania and increase employment prospects for youth.

Project Summary

In Tanzania, particularly in Morogoro, we have many fish farms operated based on low levels of knowledge, meaning that the outcome from these fish farms is low and can be characterized as subsistence fish farming. Many of these farms operate as a side business for farmers and small business owners, and young people are often engaged. As the benefits from these fish farms are very low, there are minimal finances to pay the youth for their work. If the skills of these young people are improved, the benefit from the small fish farms will increase, and the youth will be in a position where they can get paid or paid more. At the same time, they will gain skills that make it possible for them to be more flexible as a workforce and get self-employment and decent jobs where this was not possible before the training.

For this reason, the proposed six (6) months project aims to create self-employment and decent jobs by equipping them with fish farming and processing skills. Technical skills will be supplemented with soft skills, internships/job placement, entrepreneurship, and mentoring so youth can create a livelihood through local self-employment and jobs.

The project targets 50 young people working in fish farms and 50 unemployed youths interested in fish farming or processing. It is upskilling for employed youths and reskilling for unemployed youths.

To make this feasible, YPO will work with beneficiaries (fish farm owners) who will: make their fish farms available to be used for delivering training to beneficiaries (youths with jobs in fish farms and unemployed youths with an interest in fish farming or processing); choose their young workers who will come and learn fish farming skills to increase productivity and revenue of farms; provide an opportunity for interns’ placement in these farms; and employ the interns just after completing the internship.

Fish farming and processing training will be held at eight centres (eight wards). There will be six trainers and two implementation phases. YPO staff will reach four wards or centers in the first and second phases. YPO trainers will follow the beneficiaries in their wards. Each ward will be handled by one trainer who will train no more than 15 trainees.

Immediately after completing the fish farming and processing training, YPO technical staff will start coaching the trainees through their workplaces in fish farms and fried and/or smoked fish businesses. YPO will provide start-up material to 40 unemployed youths to establish and run their fried and/or smoked fish business and support an additional capital of 4,000 fish fingerlings to fish farms that will be used as raw materials to increase capital and fish production that will in turn increase sales and revenue and contribute to creating 10 youths’ new employment in these farms and increase the monthly wages over Tshs 150,000/= of young workers who were already working on these farms.

In 2022

Testimonials

Title: African Youth Partnership for an equitable recovery from the global COVID-19 pandemic

Focus Area: Advocacy | Youth Employment | Economic Growth and Trade

Aligned SDGs :

Target: Youth and Youth with Disabilities.

Location: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

Description: The Ford Foundation is funding the project, which will be implemented by Restless Development and Youth Opportunity & Transformation in Africa (YOTA).Youth Power Organization (YPO) has been engaged as a Youth Task Team to implement groundwork. YPO will develop and implement policy accountability frameworks, produce collective reviews and evidence of the performance of national and regional COVID-19 recovery programmes, and amplify youth voices in policy spaces, thereby influencing national and regional policies, programmes and budgets in favour of more equitable and inclusive recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Project Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has, without a doubt, exacerbated significant global economic and social challenges. In Africa, young people, especially the vulnerable youth, have not been spared by the devastating effects of the pandemic. The disruption by the COVID-19 pandemic has amplified many of the challenges already facing the continent’s youth. In eastern Africa, the pandemic has had a ravaging effect on youth economic opportunity, and according to a survey conducted by the YouLead Consortium on young people’s experience with COVID-19, youth in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda emphasised that lockdown measures interfered with their income and education. At the same time, reduced mobility, increased costs of products, and a global recession have significantly affected their participation in informal sector activity.

African governments must deal with critical vaccine access, uptake and distribution issues. However, they have yet to address growing concerns about authoritarianism, the mismanagement of COVID-19 funds, and the allocation of resources meant to intervene in health, education, and infrastructural development. Corruption, represented in the lack of transparency and accountability during the pandemic, is affecting inclusive and sustainable recovery for youth and other marginalised groups. Current estimates suggest that young people below 35 constitute about 65% of Africa’s population. They have a high appetite for leading continental pandemic recovery efforts. Many have already exemplified themselves as active agents in the fight against COVID-19 by volunteering as frontliners in essential services, while others are constantly innovating to meet the emerging demands for crucial products. There should therefore be no recovery efforts on the continent without youth. YOTA, Restless Development and Youth Power Organization thus seek to escalate youth action for an equitable recovery across Africa, focusing on the following pilot countries: Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.