Huguka Dukore Akazi Kanoze (HDAK) Youth Workforce and Enterprise Program in Rwanda (2016-2021). The USAID Rwanda Huguka Dukore Akazi Kanoze project is a five-year follow-on project to the earlier Akazi Kanoze project (2008-2016), which aimed to provide 40,000 vulnerable youth – 36,000 new youths and 4,000 Akazi Kanoze alumni – with workforce readiness skills through enhanced training by local implementing partners in 25 of 30 districts across Rwanda. In partnership with Education Development Center and Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Connexus improved the ability of private sector firms in Rwanda to engage youth in new jobs and in structured contracts. . At the conclusion of Connexus’ work, HDAK reported that over four years, 4,334 youth (61% female) were linked to agribusiness opportunities; 65% of HDAK participants received a job within six months; 5,780 youth businesses were created; and youth developed partnerships with over 1,300 (60% rural) private companies. With input supplier Holland Greentech (HGT), Connexus helped develop a “last mile entrepreneur” network of 40 youth agents to provide product-related training and sales of HGT agricultural products and services to rural farmers at HGT-sponsored demonstration farms.
Connexus also worked with Rwandan formal finance institutions and CRS savings and internal lending communities to help them engage more than 13,000 additional youth in formal and informal financial services and to help youth transition to the formal financial sector. Connexus worked with Rwandan microfinance institutions, RIM and Goshen, to create innovative new finance products targeted to youth to promote savings and business loans. By the end of 2020 more than 8,600 youth (40% female) had saved approximately $3M and 618 youth entrepreneurs, including 254 young women entrepreneurs, had borrowed approximately $1.46M to create or expand businesses.
Client: Education Development Center (EDC); 2017-2021
“USAID Huguka Dukore Akazi Kanoze will provide learning and internship opportunities; entrepreneurship training and coaching; and access to financing, family planning, and reproductive information. The project promotes gender equality, social inclusion for youth with disabilities, and holistic health programming.” – EDC webpage on USAID Huguka Dukore
