Work and Rural Livelihoods: The Micro Dynamics of Africa’s ‘Youth Employment Crisis’

While it is widely accepted that Africa is experiencing a youth employment crisis, the nature of the crisis is disputed. In relation to rural youth, the crisis is variously framed in term so unemployment, underemployment, missing jobs, a lack of decent work, waithood and mixed or diverse livelihoods; with each framing pointing toward a different response. We look more closely at how young people engage with the labour market using a small, high-frequency dataset that includes activities of 233 individuals aged 18–24 years in rural areas of Ghana and Uganda. Specifically, we describe four dimensions of their work (its nature, frequency, steadiness and amount), analyse relationships between these dimensions, and link them with characteristics of the study participants. We conclude that in the early phases of livelihood building non-domestic work activities of young people are multi-faceted, context and seasonally specific, and highly gendered. This reflects, in part, different priorities given to education, domestic work, childbearing and social relations relative to economic activities. This study highlights the need for a better understanding of the various factors—including individual priorities—that come into play in the early phases of livelihood building, and their implications for when and how young people engage with non-domestic work.