fewer sales for people who are already self‐employed, if they are now less productive than the youth. An impact evaluation showed that this is exactly what happened to some men in Northern Uganda when the WINGS project supported women to enter the retail trading business (Blattman et al., 2013)—but since the women had become more productive, the benefit to the village as a whole was still very positive. Indeed, this result suggests that the women should have been doing this work before, but various female‐specific constraints prevented them from entering the sector.

Despite the importance of _agriculture,_ there is little scholarship on how to help youth establish themselves as commercial farmers. A recent report by the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) highlights the opportunities and challenges of a youth‐focused agricultural strategy, observing that “the nexus between youth and agriculture has only partially and insufficiently been developed and translated into public policies” (AGRA 2015, page 174). The report argues that countries need an integrated youth agricultural strategy, which should help youth see agriculture as a business and themselves as entrepreneurs, taking advantage of new technologies being developed for African agriculture.

But evidence on successful programs of this kind is just now beginning to trickle in. The AGRA report offers several examples of new approaches being rolled out in some countries but notes that none of the programs was rigorously evaluated. The 3ie database of systematic reviews on interventions in agriculture shows only one review covering a topic of potential interest for youth employment strategies. It is on Farmer Field Schools, an innovative approach to developing and upgrading skills in the sector (Waddington et al. 2014). In this case, while a few small field school pilots were successful, all failed at scale‐up, which is not a very helpful result for the development practitioner (although relevant for strategy development).

One rigorously evaluated program was in Liberia, where an NGO helped young ex‐combatants to establish a commercial family farm (Blattman and Annan, 2016). The program was residential (which raised its costs) and provided agricultural training, capital, inputs, as well as counselling in life skills (self‐regulation). Participants, many of whom already engaged in agriculture part‐time, increased their productive time on their farms, raised their earnings from crop sales, and reduced their participation in illicit activities.

Another well‐evaluated intervention is the ultra‐poor graduation programs developed by BRAC. These programs were designed to enable very poor women—initially in South Asia—to develop new livelihoods to raise their incomes. Most women chose to start raising livestock and received an in‐kind grant at the beginning of the project. Throughout the project, participants received mentoring in practices to raise healthy and productive livestock, as well as advice and support from a project facilitator. A review of several of these programs showed a high level of success (Banerjee et al., 2015). They are now being piloted in other countries and settings; some pilots are being run by the public sector instead of by BRAC employees and contractors.

**Summing up.** Although the household production sector is where most youth will find employment opportunities, the impact evaluation literature does not yield a clear conclusion on what works, perhaps because the sector is so heterogeneous. A young person needs technical skills to become a self‐employed mechanical repair person, hairdresser, or carpenter, and the traditional way to acquire these skills is through an apprenticeship. On the other hand, retail trading requires no apprenticeship and, depending on the business smarts of the youth, may be as lucrative or even more lucrative than the traditional trades. Skills are not enough in agriculture, where land and capital are required as well, especially if the goal is to move beyond subsistence into commercial agriculture. Finance (savings and credit) is the one cross‐cutting intervention that stands out as important in all sectors. Finally, some important potential constraints (such as access to location) are relevant for the whole household

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