“The top priority for youth in Myanmar and Vietnam isn’t a high salary,” says Jonathan de Luca, 2017 IDRC Research Award Recipient. “It’s adequate health, being able to spend time with family, and to develop and use skills.”

This finding suggests that policymakers and business leaders don’t understand the needs of young

women and men, he says. “Interviews with policymakers and business leaders show that they believe that providing better paying work is sufficient.”

De Luca’s research focused on youth livelihoods in medium-sized cities of the Greater Mekong sub-region. “Dawei in Myanmar and Quy Nhon in Vietnam are experiencing rapid economic development as a result of export-oriented industrialization and manufacturing,” he says. Despite the steady jobs this industrialization creates, he found that young people are much more interested in self-employment because of the freedom and autonomy it affords them.

De Luca confesses that “I really had no idea how everything would come together until a month into the analysis phase where I took a step back and thought “Ah-hah! This actually is telling a really interesting story!”

“I can’t forget that my research exists only because there were young people in Vietnam and Myanmar who wanted to talk to me about the issues that affect them and tell me about their aspirations and hopes for life and work in the future,” he says. “I not only owe it to them for helping me to complete my research, but I also owe it to them to have my work contribute to some change in this world.”

“So even though my year at IDRC is over, I’m going to take this research with me and try and help it to influence something in some way.”

Youth make up a third of Kenya’s population. Up to 35% of them are unemployed or work in informal micro-enterprises. Rachel Kalbfleisch, a 2016 IDRC Research Award recipient, wanted to know more about their ambitions and whether these youth planned to grow their businesses.  

The answer, she found, was “yes”. This is definitely the case for Nairobi youth, many of whom went into business because they identified an opportunity. And, contrary to assumptions, she found that youth pushed into business by necessity also “had significant growth aspirations. They showed a strong desire and willingness to grow their businesses, not only because it would be better for them, but so that they could pull other people out of unemployment,” she says.

Kalbfleisch had not considered engaging in research before coming to IDRC, but her experience “has completely changed the course of what I was doing.” The fieldwork was particularly memorable, she says. So was returning to present her findings, including to a research methods class at the University of Nairobi. “They thought it was funny that I was studying that,” she says, “because, as the professor said, a lot of the students have their own informal businesses.”

Youth fare better financially than adults in the processing of cassava in Ghana. They could also surpass them in production and marketing if they had more access to credit and extension services, says Nana Anima Akrofi, a 2016 IDRC Research Award recipient.

Ghana is the world’s sixth largest producer of cassava and the crop remains the country’s most important staple food. Cassava is also of growing economic importance and could provide jobs for women and youth while increasing food security.

Akrofi set out to determine what role youth play in the cassava value chain and how their performance compares to that of adults. “The main challenge youth face is poor access to credit and extension services,” she says. “This inhibits their production activities. They are, however, relatively more profitable in processing — by turning the roots into dry flakes or flour — than adults.”

Akrofi credits the IDRC Research Award for enabling her “to identify issues in agri-food businesses that could generate options for improving food and income security,” she says. It also “opened the opportunity for me to pursue further studies and undertake academic research.”

Experiencing the realities of research in the field is what Claire Le Barbenchon, a 2015 IDRC Research Award recipient, “looks back upon with fondness. Field research was a brand new experience for me,” she says, and she was doing so “in a yet unexplored country for me — Vietnam.”

Her research on understanding non-farm employment among ethnic minority groups threw Le Barbenchon’s work a few initial curves. First, her permits were delayed, forcing her to consider different work. Then she discovered that national surveys had not properly captured migration of ethnic minorities and to find enough interviewees, she would have to go into remote areas.

“As I got to know different people from Vietnam and learned more about the culture, my research changed and improved, and my questions became more relevant and precise,” she says. “Connecting with people and asking questions was the most enriching part of my experience.”

Of her year at IDRC, Le Barbenchon says that “my appreciation, understanding and insight into the world of development research was formed by IDRC, and has been a springboard for the continuation of my career in this field. It also allowed me to grow as a person, in an intellectually charged environment.”