This research attempts to understand why many unemployed young people are not entering selfemployment
in Botswana as well as actual youth trajectories to self-employment. It is based on the analysis
of documentary sources, focus groups and interviews with young people, both unemployed and selfemployed,
and officials in Mogoditshane and Gaborone. Interviews with young people constitute the main
data source while others are complementary. The study found that the prior experience of a job that has
provided training is often the route into self-employment, and that many unemployed young people do not
consider it feasible to move to self-employment from unemployment. But at the same time they are not
willing to stay in unskilled, risky, low-paid and insecure employment that does not provide decent work. It
challenges policy makers to ponder strategies towards the creation of decent employment, training, wage
employment, work experience and self-employment and their inter-linkages as a way of addressing youth
unemployment in Botswana. The study suggests how self-employment constraints can be reduced to
provide a more enabling environment.