Empowering rural youth through entrepreneurship development: Tackling unemployment, migration, and Catalyzing innovation

Promoting youth entrepreneurship has emerged as a potential solution, enabling young people to create their own employment and contribute to sustainable development. This paper reviews the literature on youth entrepreneurship as a strategy for youth empowerment and sustainable development. A systematic literature review was conducted by adopting the preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) technique. Keywords included youth entrepreneurship, sustainable development, youth empowerment and related terms. The findings reveal that youth entrepreneurship provides economic, social, and psychological benefits for young people, while also contributing to sustainable development through job creation, innovation, and social value creation.. The review highlights the need for a multi-stakeholder approach involving the public and private sectors, development partners, education institutions, and youth themselves to create an enabling ecosystem for youth entrepreneurship. The review concludes that strategic investment in youth entrepreneurship is vital for empowering young people, unlocking their innovative potential, and harnessing their energy to build more sustainable and equitable economies and societies.