Accessibility and Use of Entrepreneurship Education by Rural Youth:

Abstract

This paper examines Kilombero district youths’ access and use of entrepreneurship training. Specifically, the paper assesses rural youth’s access to entrepreneurship education, analyses the extent to which they use the training accessed and lastly, it identifies challenges encountered by the trained youth in accessing entrepreneurship education and in enterprise start up. The study on which the paper is based used a case study design whereby primary data was collected from 50 randomly selected youth respondents using a questionnaire. Primary data was also collected from four focus group discussions and 10 key informants. Quantitative data from the respondents was analysed using SPSS whereby descriptive statistics were determined, qualitative data was analysed using content analysis. Study findings show that youth’s access to entrepreneurship training in Kilombero district is low. In addition, only a few institutions provide entrepreneurship training despite the high demand for the same. The paper concludes that there is little accessibility and use of entrepreneurship training by youth in Kilombero district due to socio-economic constraints such as poverty, workload particularly for the female youth and timing for the training. Based on these findings, it is recommended that the government and private sector should increase their efforts to enable increases access to entrepreneurship training by rural youth. In addition, access to credit by the needs to be improved to allow them get the required capital for business set up.