Expanding Livelihood Options for Youth in the Horn of Africa .

In 2020, Adan Hassanow Kalda, a 28-year-old Kenyan, had his life turned upside down. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he lost his job when the marketing company he was working for in Nairobi closed its doors. Desperate to find new ways to support himself, he made his way home to Banisa, only to discover that his livelihood options were severely limited due to an ongoing drought caused by three consecutive below-average rainy seasons.

Adan is certainly not alone. Youth around the world face unprecedented challenges, including high unemployment, climate change, migration, natural disasters, and violence, which are exacerbated by educational disruptions, lack of prior work experience, limited political and social power, and increased vulnerability to exploitation. In fragile and conflict-affected regions, such as the Horn of Africa, these challenges can also make young people susceptible to ideological radicalization by violent extremist organizations or inter-clan conflicts.

Determined to change these circumstances, Adan formed the Kubi youth group in January 2022 to provide young people with a platform to advocate for their human and community rights. Adan recalls their challenges. “We could not pay our bills and could not sustain our families. Poverty was biting hard, and it became so difficult and discouraging, to the extent that my friends were giving up.”

Now an opportunity to make and sell bricks has changed all of that, offering Adan and 59 other young people the chance to be meaningfully employed while providing the local community with more affordable, durable bricks for building their homes.

Recognizing the unique challenges experienced in the Horn of Africa’s cross-border areas, USAID’s Cross-Border Community Resilience (CBCR) Activity is working with local implementing partners to support expanded livelihood and employment opportunities, inclusive of women, youth, and economically excluded groups. It was through CBCR and one of these partners, Voice of Peace in Africa (VOPA), that Adan got into the brickmaking business in April 2023.

CBCR identified six youth groups (18-35 years) to support during the drought, including Kubi, and provided 10 members from each with entrepreneurial training such as financial literacy, bookkeeping, and brickmaking training. Upon completion of this training, VOPA supplied these 60 young people with interlocking brick machines, enabling them to make large quantities of high-quality bricks at a low cost, increase profitability and productivity, and deliver a superior product to customers.

Adan explains that after the training and receiving the interlocking machines, the youth started working together to improve their livelihoods. “We managed to produce small quantities of bricks and began marketing the product,” he says. “It was a journey of resilience, exhaustion, patience, and tolerance.”

Kubi was divided into two groups of 10 members, one focused on brick production and one charged with marketing. Marketing the bricks was particularly important: communities in Banisa usually build their homes from stones and blocks, so Kubi’s new construction material needed to be introduced, explained, and adopted. After three months, the group started receiving orders; as community members realized that the bricks were cheaper and of a higher quality than traditional building materials, demand began to outpace supply.

“We got many orders from clients,” Adan says, “and this motivated us to work extra hard so as to accelerate our production to meet the targets as well as increase our income. In the first six months, we were producing an average of 200 bricks per day. As the orders became overwhelming, we employed 20 more youths and trained them to support production. In the last six months, we managed to produce over 20,000 bricks.”

Kubi sells each brick for 30 Kenyan shillings. In just one year, the group is reporting a turnover of nearly 500,000 shillings.

Zeynab Mohamed, the Banisa sub-county administrator, is impressed with how willing young people are to learn innovative techniques to improve their livelihoods. “The fact that they were willing to diversify their land use from pastoralism to mechanization and adopted a new technology as a way of making their own houses and for the entire community is quite outstanding” she says.