Youth Employment Preferences in Rwanda and Sierra Leone: A Constrained Comparative Secondary Analysis

<ns3:p>Background Youth labour markets across Sub-Saharan Africa combine high aspirations for secure wage work with entrenched informality and underemployment. Aim This article clarifies how structural constraints shape stated employment preferences and entrepreneurial orientation among youth in Rwanda and Sierra Leone. Design A constrained comparative secondary analysis drew on Afrobarometer Round 9 microdata for Sierra Leone and triangulated these findings with nationally reported labour-market and policy indicators for Rwanda. Public microdata for Rwanda were unavailable, so a bounded-evidence strategy transparently distinguishes verifiable survey statistics from document-based context. Findings Sierra Leonean youth express a cautious economic outlook—fewer than half expect improvement within a year—yet most endorse redistributive growth and demand stronger gender equity in job access. Preference for self-employment appears necessity-driven where institutional trust and public-goods provision remain moderate, rather than an indicator of opportunity entrepreneurship. Rwanda’s reported labour-absorption pressure and pervasive informality reinforce this reading, suggesting that education-fuelled aspiration gaps widen when formal job creation lags. Contribution The study advances an “institutionally conditioned planned-behaviour” framework that integrates the Theory of Planned Behaviour with opportunity-structure theory and human-capital expectations. Methodologically, it demonstrates how rigorous comparative inference can be maintained through explicit verification protocols when evidence access is asymmetric, and it outlines a reproducible pathway for symmetric modelling once Rwandan microdata become publicly available. Practical implications Policies that promote youth entrepreneurship without parallel investment in inclusive growth, reliable public goods, and transparent digital governance risk shifting systemic labour-market failure onto young people rather than resolving it.</ns3:p>