Youth unemployment: lessons from Ethiopia

In Hawassa City in southern Ethiopia, 250 kilometres from the capital Addis Ababa, 24-year-old Mitike Paulos, her younger sister and three friends are busy producing leather bags and belts for sale. Mitike and her sister learned the craft from their brother, who teaches at the government-run Leather Industry Development Institute in Addis Ababa. They started business in 2011 with a 35,000-birr ($2,000) loan from a smallloan lender. Today their business employs 10 people and as they plan to expand production, they also hope to hire more workers. “The more we work, the more we grow,” says Mitike.