Entrepreneurship and Beekeeping for Young Men at Risk for Violence in Dar es Salaam Tanzania: A Pilot Study

Most violence in Dar es Salaam Tanzania is committed by and against young men. The most significant predictors of homicide death are unemployment, poor education, and living alone. Young, under-employed men with poor education are also at risk of recruitment into non-national armies such as al-Shabaab. However, they have the potential to contribute to be a positive force behind national economic empowerment with the right training and support.

Intervention around employment status is the most achievable. Most occupations open to uneducated young men are inherently unstable as they are generally seasonal, short term, or illegal. With formal jobs in short supply, difficulty in generating more, and a large youth population to absorb, most governments in Africa and multinational financial institutions agree that entrepreneurship is an important option to securing economic and political security.

Self-employment and entrepreneurship is encouraged by the Tanzanian government. Several initiatives have emerged in Tanzania to address youth unemployment. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) including International Labour Organization (ILO), Plan International, Restless Development and others have started implementing projects to address the lack of opportunities for productive economic engagement by young men. Novel strategies include establishment of bee-keeping enterprises in youth groups supported by the Tanzania Forest Services (TFS) at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism, and infotainment to give youth skills enabling entrepreneurship developed by Fema, an NGO. Little research data are available on the effectiveness of such initiatives even though they have good potential for positive results.

Few studies have examined entrepreneurial and micro-enterprise programs with a focus on young men at risk for violence, especially from Africa. Most research on entrepreneurial and micro-enterprise programs in low-income countries center around the issue of HIV/AIDS with a focus on women who have not been the traditional income earners. In addition to a focus on a different population, interventions are often poorly described, and programmatic content was routinely omitted. Studies are usually a single group post-intervention assessment using quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods. Most are also flawed due to small sample sizes, lack of controls, or objective longitudinal measures. Thus there is a dearth of rigorous research on entrepreneurial and micro-enterprise programs.

In order to address this research gap, an intervention trial with four arms involving training in entrepreneurship, beekeeping, and health education was envisioned.