Youth migration and perception on business start-up in Uganda

The youth constitute a significant proportion (21%) of the total population in Uganda. They face challenges of unemployment, which forces them to migrate. This creates a high dependency burden since the majority are not employed and are seeking for paid work in both the private and public sectors. Migration is mostly used as a survival strategy to gain meaningful employment. Although a large body of evidence points to looking for employment as a major reason for youth migration, little is known about migrants’ perceptions towards starting their own business in Uganda. Drawing on a sample of 1157 youth migrants from a national cross-sectional survey on migration and employment, we seek to examine how perceptions influence job creation. Results from a multinomial logistic regression model pointed to four major findings. First, youth migrants who did not believe that they had the required skills to start a new business were more likely to be unemployed compared to those who believed they had the required skills. Second, the likelihood of being unemployed regular employee or paid worker was less among youth migrants who did not intend to start a new business in the next 1–2 years. Third, youth migrants who did not think it is a good opportunity to start a new business were more likely to be regular employees, and last, the likelihood of being a regular employee or a paid worker was observed to be higher for youth migrants who did not believe they had the required skills to start a new business than their counterparts who thought otherwise. The findings call for promoting positive attitude towards youth enterprise development. We recommend that promotion of entrepreneurship should be emphasised as an important component in solving youth unemployment in Uganda.