On the 1st of February 2007, the Ministry of Gender and Youth, Sports and Recreation assisted by a joint UN partnership consisting of UNDP, ILO, UNICEF and FAO, launched a project named, “Youth Employment Promotion towards Poverty Reduction in Lesotho”.

Work has been moving smoothly for full implementation of the three pronged project: Creating an enabling policy environment; Enterprise development for youth employment; and formation of strategic partnerships and resource mobilization.

These three facet will work together to create an enabling national environment for the promotion of youth employment and enterprise development to support poverty reduction initiatives in Lesotho. Thus, opening up the road for the youth of Lesotho to take hold of their own futures and positively contribute to the world they live in through innovative entrepreneurship endeavors.

Providing enterprise development opportunities for the young men and women of Lesotho is and exciting and fruitful endeavor. Of course, an integral component for the success of the initiative is the enthusiasm, commitment and workability of the youth employment proposals and schemes that are put forward by the entrepreneurs themselves. The project aims to support and develop these proposals to ensure that Lesotho’s youth devise their own community based approaches to enhance youth employment and combat poverty reduction in Lesotho. The project aims to adopt a strategy that deals with changing perceptions of students towards entrepreneurship, training out-of-school youth in entrepreneurship, and offering a micro-credit scheme to youth who have successfully developed sound business plans or who are already in business.

UNDP Lesotho is glad to report that enterprise development for youth in Lesotho is well under way; with the preliminary research complete and the instruction to the trainers conducted, the commencement of entrepreneurship training is in full swing. The ILO’s Start and Improve your Business Model training package started at the beginning of July and has successfully created a number of mentoring relationships. Out of the four pilot districts: Leribe, Maseru, Mafetang, and Qacha’s Nek, as of August 6th, two-hundred and ninety (160 female; 130 male) entrepreneurs have been trained, and will be continuously monitored throughout the project lifetime


Energy and Environment Unit
UNDP Lesotho