Private Sector Development

An activity under STRIVE, the Afghanistan Secure Futures (ASF) initiative enhanced economic opportunities for youth in Afghanistan by targeting youth apprentices. The program had two key components: increase the number and diversity of contracts for enterprises—primarily workshops in the construction sector—who employ youth apprentices, and improve working conditions and learning opportunities for those youth. The latter included a critical literacy training component as well as a workplace safety component.

Over the course of the 3 years, ASF reached 353 workshops and 1,080 youth apprentices, with approximately one-third of these receiving multiple ASF interventions. ASF’s role in supporting workshop owners—were awarded contracts totaling US$2.2 million–to secure contracts included: providing training; facilitating contacts between workshops and contractors; and connecting workshop owners to each other, facilitating the process of subcontracting, or joint bids by multiple workshops.

This STRIVE for Learning Activity Brief outlines the program's key approaches, methods, and outputs.

ASF was one of five country programs implemented under the STRIVE program, funded by the USAID Displaced Children and Orphans Fund, in close collaboration with the USAID Microenterprise Development office cooperative agreement. STRIVE is an Associate Award under the FIELD-Support LWA.

Market-based development programmes can help people living in poverty benefit from markets and lift themselves out of poverty. However, many such approaches do not pay attention to power imbalances that perpetuate marginalisation and poverty. To reach their fullest potential, market-based programmes should actively strengthen the power of marginalised smallholders and women.

Major events in the market system, induced by changes in policy, regulation, social movements or business models can provide opportunities to intervene and rebalance power. Market-based programmes should also be complemented by non-market interventions that address poverty and sustainability issues in household and environmental systems.

Through its work, Oxfam has encountered some of the challenges and limitations of market-based approaches. This paper is intended to raise these challenges with the broader community of development practitioners employing market-based approaches and share approaches Oxfam has taken to addressing them. The most conspicuous of these challenges is a need to address power imbalances between smallholders and larger businesses, as well as between women and men.