1.Back ground
Youth employment presents a particular challenge to Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, 25 million people are between 15 and 29 years-old, a figure that is expected to grow to over 35 million in the next 20 years (CSA, 2016). The economy will need to produce approximately 2 million new jobs per year to keep the pace of this growing young workforce. New job creation is currently well below this. The country faces growing youth landlessness in rural areas and insignificant rural job creation. This leads to an increase in migration to urban areas (World Bank, 2007) and outside of the country, and can trigger social instability. This, combined with practical challenges of moving to urban areas from poorer rural areas, presents particular barriers for youth employment and economic development. Ethiopia is at risk of not being able to harvest a demographic dividend from its youth bulge. Youth unemployment therefore is a significant socio-economic challenge in Ethiopia that has been recognized and prioritized by the Government of Ethiopia and development partners.
In the Siti and Waghimra zones of the Somali and Amhara regional states, respectively, youth face many of these challenges. Siti and Waghimra zones experience continuous rural and urban poverty and rural communities heavily dependent on the PSNP supports. Both zones face higher levels of landless populations and many youth transitioning out of pastoralism and agriculture. Both areas are vulnerable to frequent droughts of increasing intensity.
Siti has a high level of unsafe migration, with particular vulnerabilities for young women and girls who move to target domestic work in Somaliland and Djibouti. Waghimra boys and young men tend to migrate for temporary wage employment to urban areas and large-scale agricultural areas. They often live on the street or in precarious situations and do not build assets through engagement in temporary work. Young women and girls from Waghimra also migrate within Ethiopia and out of the country for informal domestic work. However, strong cultural barriers against wage employment and lack of skills keep Sitti and Waghimra zones youth from more permanently migrating to urban areas despite strong job growth in nearby cities such as Dire Dawa, Jigjiga, Dessie, Kombolcha, Mekele and Bahir Dar.
Low levels of education and skills, and cultural and practical barriers to certain types of employment are additional challenges, particularly in the Sitti and Waghimra zones. Addressing these challenges requires a multi-faceted approach of community mobilization, capacity and skills building and strong linkages to private and public sector employers. These approaches need uses evidence-based solutions and be context specific. In response to this, the Action has conducted different studies and surveys like baseline survey, labour market assessment, SBCC strategy development, gender study, curriculum adaptation of soft skill trainings and development of decent work promotion strategy. These documents are shared to relevant stake holders and applied in the course of project implementation.
2. Background to Operational Research
As a consequence of high rates of unemployment and underemployment in Ethiopia and throughout many other countries in Africa, youth employment has taken a central place in the government and development partners agenda. The EC commissioned study on youth employment underpins the idea “to address youth employment challenges, countries will need an integrated approach involving different levels of government and linking with overall development and employment policy that reaches beyond the labour market and education policy.”[1] As a pilot program, the Action makes an effort to improve the knowledge management base through operational research and build the overall evidence base to inform the implementation of this Action, and future policy and programming related to youth workforce development and labour force participation. For this reason, the Action will conduct and disseminate the findings of prioritized operations research topics to understand which activities and approaches to promoting youth livelihoods transitions are most effective. Details of research topics, methodology of research and related aspects will be identified and submitted by the winner consultant’s inception report.
The Action will improve further its implementation using results of this operations research and documentation by assessing its own innovative approaches to document learning. The Action in defined learning agendas including identifying likely operations research topics, which will be validated through this operational research. Based on assessments findings and recommendations, the Action will identify promising practices, make recommendations for improvements to program implementation and broader policy, and conduct a series of workshops for key stakeholders. This will also enhance the PPP by creating a shared understanding of promising approaches and continued challenges. This output will also leverage the initial studies including the SBCC strategy, the gender assessments, and the labour market assessments to prioritize topics for research. Studies could expand to other RESET cluster areas to better understand challenges and opportunities that youth are facing in different geographic areas. Key identified study variables/approaches, systems and methodologies/ among others that will be presented by the consultant through review of various documents.
3. Target of the project
Unemployed and underemployed young men and women (aged 15-29) from Sitti and Waghimra Zones are the target groups of this Action. Landless youth, school dropouts, out-of-school youth, some unemployed TVET graduates, any returned migrants, and violence-affected youth have been the focus of this Action. The Action targeted a total of eight woredas; four in each zone; namely: Ziquala, Sekota Zuria, Dehana and Gazgibla in Waghimra Zone and Shinile, Dembel, Ayisha and Errer in Sitti Zone. These woredas have been selected based on their high levels of vulnerability, shrinking natural resource base to support rural livelihoods, consultations with the local governments, willingness of woredas and communities to participate, and existing or potential economic opportunities for wage-based employment.
Almost all of the beneficiaries are poor and marginalized youth from rural Kebeles (villages), and all have in common the interest/openness to migrate within Ethiopia for economic reasons. Overall, 9,000 marginalized youth aged between 15 and 29 have been targeted by this project (50% each for both operational areas). Out of the total targeted beneficiaries, the project anticipates empowering approximately 3,500 male and female young adults (aged above 18) to transition to wage employment livelihoods- mostly in urban, ‘receiving’ areas. The remaining 5,500 youth, mostly adolescents between 15 and 18 years old, will build skills and assets by accessing youth economic empowerment services including resilience building sessions, relevant life skill trainings packages and services within the One Stop services, but may or may not transition to wage-based employment. These services are already started and underway.
The project will directly contribute to the Government of Ethiopia’s national development plan (such as in the overarching Growth and Transformation Plan II, RJOC initiative and new youth livelihoods policies) focusing on facilitating or creating job opportunities for youth. The project is implemented in collaboration with the respective regional and zonal government sector offices and project implementing partners (ORDA, Oxfam and UNISOD). Save the Children and the implementing partners have therefore planned to hire and external consultant or consulting firm for conducting operational research to inform evidence based and sustainable youth workforce development.The Action used multi-faceted approach of community mobilization, capacity and skills building through empowering youth, and improved linkages to economic opportunities outside of high-poverty rural areas of these zones. The project also used a broad approach that engages several key stakeholders to successfully and sustainably implement strategies and activities. In in view of this, the Action aimed to make evidence based decision on what works well and what on the methodologies, efficiency and effectiveness of the project implementation through this operational research. It will focus of the which approach, methodology and strategy is working well and which one is not, which activity is effective and efficient and which is not, how the partnership management helps the project implementation, how the leverage of resources, coordination and complementary and supplementary of projects in the operation area; how was the input-output-outcome-impact relation of project hierarchy are fitting; what lessons could be documented, shared and used from the course of 1.75 years of project implementation period. The research also is intended to advise the Action on what are the triggering factors for successes or failures of project approaches/methodologies and what mechanisms should be used to improve failures and maintain successes.
The research report will be used by implementing agencies, the local government and the donor to improve implementation, to advise policies and to evaluate proposals of related projects respectively.
4. Objectives of the Operational Research
i. To assess which methodologies, approaches and strategies worked well; which did not and the why? in the course of project implementation;
ii. To assess efficiency and effectiveness of methodologies, approaches and strategies against the Work Breakdown Structure of the project /input-output-outcome-impact/ as intended in the project proposal
iii. To draw recommendations that has to be implemented by the actors of the project to improve implementation of reaming activities of the project in the remaining periods.
5. Scope of the Operational Research
The geographic scope of the study will be in Sitti and Waghimra Zones of Somali and Amhara regions of Ethiopia respectively. Representative samples will be selected from the 8 operational woredas in the two zones. The study also will cover the working environment of potential employers /private and public sectors/ within the project implementation zones and in the corridors of those areas like along routes of Debre Birhan-Kombolcha-Bahir Dar for Waghimra and Dembel-Dire Dawa-Jigjiga for Sitti. The study will focus on what worked well and what did not in relation to project approaches, processes, systems, methodologies, activities, partnership management, leverage of resources, supplementary /complementarity with other similar/related interventions in the operational areas in the courses of the project implementation in the past 1.75 years. The respondents will be representative and scientifically acceptable samples of the 9000 targeted beneficiaries of age 15 to 29 years old, government signatory partner staffs and community members. Independent context based report will be produced for Sitti and Waghimra zones. The research should be completed within 60 days from the date of contract agreement.
6. Requirements of the consultant
The consulting team is expected to have a mix of qualifications, competences and experience that will ensure a good balance between social research and development analysis with a sound understanding of food security resilience building as well as the cross cuttings: gender equity approaches, environment - climate adaptation, etc. The consultancy firm must have the following key qualifications and experiences.