Young entrepreneurs in Lusaka: Overcoming constraints through ingenuity and social entrepreneurship

This chapter draws on research conducted in one such compound, Chawama, in order to explore the employment situation of young people. Young people growing up in Lusaka's compounds face extreme challenges in finding ways to support themselves. The chapter highlights how some young people in the community act as "social entrepreneurs" a term used to denote entrepreneurial activity driven by a mission to create social value and social change, rather than only generate economic wealth for the business owner. In line with the Youth and Employment (YEMP) project, the chapter adopts a broad and inclusive conceptualisation of entrepreneurship as being practices that include some form of business or trading activity engaged in young people to make a living. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected in two separate phases by the authors, working in close collaboration with young people living in the compound who were employed as research assistants.