Training for Self-employment? The Performance of Rural Training Centres in Zimbabwe

Abstract

In common with most other developing countries, youth unemployment in Zimbabwe has reached crisis proportions. While the extent of the problem is not known precisely, it would appear that no more than one-third of the country's school-leavers found jobs in the formal sector of the economy during the late 19B0s (See Bennell and Ncube, 1991). Faced with this situation, the Government of Zimbabwe has introduced various policies which collectively seek to improve employment opportunities in the rural areas of the country where seventy percent of the population continue to live.1 This process of rural development aims not only to raise the productivity and thus household incomes of peasant (smallholder) farmers but also focuses on the employment needs cf the forty percent of the rural population who are engaged in numerous non-farm activities.