Youth, apprenticeship, and petty production in Lusaka

Abstract

The article analyses the nature of apprenticeship in the petty sector of Lusaka and its value partly for producers in the small workshops partly for out-of-school youths, who are currently its main clientele. The poorer youth especially attempt to utilize this training as an alternative route towards more rewarding work-positions in the economy. It is argued, however, that unlike in the early 1970s, youths even with apprenticeship training have great difficulties in entering the more profitable levels of petty production and that apprenticeship itself has turned into a mechanism for the recruitment of semi wage-labour, enabling workshops to survive under adverse economic conditions.