A noble youth empowerment initiative, which kick-started amid much pomp and fanfair has now taken a new meaning in Zimbabwe. Youths who received loans under the Old Mutual Youth empowerment fund have decided to re-write the project proposals they used to apply for the loans and give the initiative a new meaning of “personal empowerment”.

70% of the youths who got the loans have diverted the funds to pay for lobola and other personal things. Livingston Dzikira, Director of the Zimbabwe Youth Council, revealed this at a workshop organized by UNICEF in Nyanga. Lack of capacity building and to some extent also creativity and innovation has resulted in many youths submitting proposals for chicken rearing which the council director said they are now rejecting.

Under the programme Old Mutual issued US$11 million dollars to youth so that they can start livelihood projects but it seems like chicken rearing is what youths in this country are good at. Though some may complain that the funds were little but when one goes on to pay lobola and get a wife it really shows it was enough to start something

In a poll conducted on the Zimbabwe Youth Council website, 44.1% of the people who took part in the poll say the Youth Fund is not accessible in a friendly way and 19.6% don’t even know about the Youth Fund. To cap it all even the director of the youth empowerment body does not have the figures of the actual number of youths who benefited from the fund.

This entry was posted on September 25th, 2012 at 2:49 pm by Lenard Kamwendo and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.