Theme : Youth career alignment strategies for sustainable economic growth and development.

Introduction
The well elaborated Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8 of the United Nations seeks to achieve “full and productive employment and decent work.” particularly for young people. However, achieving this goal involves sectoral synergy—Financial sector, Education sector, ICT sector, Chamber of businesses (PSF) etc. Through this synergy, a holistic approach can be formed and enacted upon.

In the 2nd quarter of 2025 Rwanda’s Labor Force Survey report revealed that the employment rate among adults aged 31 years and above increased by 160 bps q-o-q (55.8-57.4%) while employment rate among youth aged 16-30 years old increased by 190 bps q-o-q (47.2-49.1). In comparison, the disparity of employment rates between adults and youth is relatively high, yet there is an appreciation of improvement for the youth employment trend in terms of basis points. (NISR, Q2 LFS 24/25).

Over the period, Rwanda has made significant strides in curbing youth unemployment rate, despite a growing youthful population. Quarter on quarter, the youth unemployment rate declined from 20.5% in 2024Q2 to 15.4% 2025Q2, compared to adult unemployment rates of 14.1% to 12.1% of 2024Q2 and 2025Q2, respectively. These results revealed the pace at which the trend is declining among youth and adults. However, despite this progress, there are more actions to be taken to substantially bridge the unemployment gap between adults and youth, given the fact that youth is composed of over 60% of the Rwandan population. (NISR, Q2 LFS 24/25).

Therefore, the continuous holistic approach should be an approach that is redirected towards the current economic situation vis-a-vis labor market supply and demand, so that it breeds new skills that will be useful to the youth to address contemporary economic issues.

Call for actions

The overall Labor Underutilization rate reported in the 2nd quarter of 2025 is still very high, and youth consists of 57.2% of the trend. This indicates that education attainment level isn’t the only challenge of high youth unemployment, the vast majority of the available jobs do not align with the current skills and qualifications that youth possess within the labor force. Now, this statistic raises several banding questions—Are the current skills and qualifications adequately addressing pressing economic issues ? What needs to be done to realign youth careers with the current labor market’s demands ? (NISR Q2 LFS 2025).

The high number of underutilized labor of youth and unemployed youth cannot be ignored considering the 2035 and 2050 vision for economic prosperity. If left unaddressed it will hinder progress towards the structural economic transformation of the country.

Rationale and Objective
By this growing concern of high rate of youth unemployment and skills mismatched relative to available jobs, a students’ research conference will be organized to present solutions of improving on existing efforts to empower youth through skilled jobs creation, and career enhancement. The students’ research conference is one of the Economic Policy Research Network flagship programs that keeps university’s students engaged in policy-oriented discourse.

The overall objective of this year’s students’ conference is to reflect on the current youth employment policies, best practices, challenges and opportunities to explore. The conference will enable youth at different universities to share knowledge from research papers and discussions on the current economic situations in relations to the Rwanda labor market for sustainable economic growth and development.
Research conference sub-themes

Interested students may submit papers on the topics relating to one of the sub-themes below :
• Investment strategies for youth career development.
• Innovative approaches to enhance youth participation in the private sector.
• Demanding Careers for Demanding Economic Solutions (Identification of specific career to address pressing economic issues).

Expected Participants
Emerging Researchers / Presenters
EPRN seeks papers from an individual or a team of individuals (2-3 persons) studying at university’s level / fresh graduates—Undergraduate programmes. Female students, Persons with disabilities, Refugees and displaced students are highly encouraged to participate.

Audience
The conference will attract more than 1,000 students from different universities in Rwanda and abroad. During the conference selected papers will be presented. Partner institutions will also present their reports or papers related to the conference’s themes. After the conference, EPRN will summarize conference recommendations and share them with concerned stakeholders (Public institutions, Private Sector, Universities, Development Partners, Financial Institutions and NGOs/INGOs).

Paper Submissions and Evaluations
All interested students studying at university’s level / fresh graduates—Undergraduate programmes are encouraged to send their papers through info@eprnrwanda.org by not later than 31st October 2025, 5pm Kigali time (GMT+2).

All submitted papers will be perused and evaluated on a merit base in line with research ethics. Only authors of the selected papers to be presented during the conference will be notified by not later than November 30th, 2025.

The conference is scheduled for December 05th ,2025 in Kigali (the exact venue shall be communicated).

Contact us through : info@eprnrwanda.org or call/WhatsApp : +250788357648 / +231880014690.