Youth entrepreneurship in Kampala: Managing scarce resources in a challenging environment

This chapter explores the level and characteristics of the entrepreneurial activities of young people living in one such area, Bwaise, which is located on the outskirts of Kampala. Drawing on a participatory research methodology, it examines why and how young people establish businesses in a difficult urban environment and the range of challenges they face related to resource scarcity and inadequate infrastructure. The chapter draws on a participatory study conducted in collaboration with Uganda Youth Welfare Services (UYWS) a youth organisation involved in a range of activities that seek to empower young people in Bwaise, including providing counselling, vocational training, and entrepreneurship education to disadvantaged youth. It shows how the government has largely left Bwaise's youth to fend for themselves despite its rhetoric of development and its aim to ease the mounting youth unemployment crisis by supporting young entrepreneurs. The chapter highlights how very few young entrepreneurs are "successful" when measured by their own yardsticks of growth.