Youth & Innovation

Next Generation

Every year hundreds of thousands of youth graduate from tertiary learning institutions around the country. In the recent past, it has become apparent that both the public and private sector are unable to absorb these graduates entering the job market, the Zambian economy only absorbs an estimated 10-25% of youth leaving out the rest to shoulder the weight of unemployment.

Countrywide is working on programs that will support young workers build cooperative businesses, through providing technical assistance and capacity building in Governance, Management, Production, Marketing and Membership

Agri-Entrepreneurs

The global movement to protect the planet and feed its inhabitants in a sustainable way cannot happen without the participation of young people so getting young African’s on board is vital.  Almost 60% of Africa’s population is under the age of 25, making it the world’s youngest continent. In sub-Saharan Africa youth account for almost 200 million people.

Many young people in rural areas see little future for themselves on the farms that their parents and grand-parents have worked for decades with limited opportunities to make an income. We plan on working with young people to help them become agri-entrepreneurs. 

Promoting Innovation 

Fostering young people to become entrepreneurs is one important pillar in Zambia that will help promote innovative processes in the co-operative sector. Whereas young Zambians are stuffed with great business ideas and are into trend setting all around the country, co-operatives are usually not identified as the type of enterprise of their choice.

Countrywide’s approach is to couple the need for risk and resource sharing with the desire for economic independence of young people. To harness this potential, Countrywide, alongside with its local project partners,

Youth Empowerment

Youth empowerment is both a means and an end, an attitudinal, structural, and cultural process whereby youth gain the ability, authority, and agency to make decisions and implement change in their own and other people’s lives both now and in their adulthood while bearing responsibility for the consequences of those decisions and actions.

Countrywide Cooperative endorsed the “Empowering of youth” meaning the creation and the supporting of an the enabling environment under which youth can act on their own behalf and on their terms, rather than the direction of others”. These enabling conditions include: