Using stories to amplify youth voices in made in Africa evaluations

Abstract Information: Background Story-telling has been one of the main traditional African ways of passing on knowledge and caution from one generation to another. These stories would often be told around the fireplaces as the family waits for the food to be ready, which they would start preparing in the evening after gardening. However, storytelling has steadily reduced over years due to westernised, formal data collection methods. How the story was used in our evaluations To understand the baseline values for the youth in Uganda, (defined as those aged 15-35 years for program purposes), a nationally representative survey was conducted to establish the level of youth involvement in different sectors (agriculture, education, digital economy, construction and housing as well as tourism and hospitality, sports and creatives). Stories heard affected, that evaluation choices The stories revealed that Uganda youth a very enterprising, most of them have attempted to establish enterprises, but they do not survive the 2nd year mainly due to heavy taxation, challenges in accessing capital and credit as well as limited capital to formalize and properly register their businesses. The young people further had concerns about limited meaningful involvement and participation in organizational policies and practices, saying it is more of tokenism than full participation. The documented narratives and videos capture the emotions of the young people and their desperation since most of them have dropped out of school and even the majority of those that completed various levels of education were out of employment.

Relevance Statement: This proposal demonstrates how young people's voices can be amplified better when the youth freely express themselves through narratives in their local languages, what they have gone through, what challenges faced and suggestions for improving the current conditions. The stories capture the emotions and real-life experiences that are often left out of other evaluation methodologies. Stories form a key part of ‘made in Africa evaluations'.