Youth Leadership for Agriculture Activity, Uganda: Learning to Walk the Talk

Uganda has the world’s second youngest population and the gap between those who are able to find employment and those who are not is growing. Each year 400,000 youth enter the labor market, competing for only 80,000 formal jobs. With an economy reliant on agriculture for growth and food security, Uganda sits at a critical juncture of its growth prospects. In response to this context, the USAID Uganda mission designed the Feed the Future Uganda Youth Leadership for Agriculture activity; recognizing that youth-centered initiatives must be a critical piece of USAID Uganda’s development strategy.

CLA is a foundational pillar to the current USAID Uganda CDCS. This means that Activities have been designed to promote continuous learning and adaptive management and that a culture of learning is being fostered both within YLA, its partners and also with and by the COR at the mission.

At the center of YLA’s approach to engaging youth is the commitment to learning both internally and externally. The knowledge generated from our learning agenda has enabled the Activity to better understand failures, limit constraints, and pivot both interventions and staff mindsets to address them. At each step of the learning cycle, the Mission and the COR have adopted an open approach to change, creating a safe space for conversation. In fact, creating that space has extended so far as to not consider failures as failures, but simply as steps along a path of further refinement of the activity’s approach.