Build capacity for investment among the youth before giving them money
The youth are increasing fast in numbers but are entrepreneurship ignorant due to inaction and inconsistent policies.
Since 2002 when free primary education was implemented, the number of pupils joining Grade 1 shot to 5 million, a number that has grown consistently to slightly over 11 million.
Compared against the data of boys and girls leaving high school after 12 years, a paltry 500,000 of the first intake lot finished O levels. It has been slightly over 20 years since free primary education was introduced, and the chicken has come home to roost.
Unfortunately, over the same period, while the youth numbers grew from year to year, the economy did not expand at the same rate nor did Vision 2030 promise to provide adequate decent jobs.
One most significant problem facing the government-elect in Kenya today is the lack of adequate decent jobs for the growing number of youths leaving our institutions of learning. The last two governments, starting with President Kibaki, and the two rounds of Uhuru-Ruto jubilee governments ending in 2022, have paid lip service to this problem’s primary causes. There is sustained unemployment even among people who have entrepreneurship potential who do not need to be employed by others.
Entrepreneurship
The youth are increasing fast in numbers but are entrepreneurship ignorant due to inaction and inconsistent policies. The preparers of Vision 2030 had anticipated this situation and proposed a number of solutions that focused on enhancing micro and small enterprises fortunes.
There was huge lip service when the ministry of devolution was first set up about 15 years ago. What is required going forward is an addition of ecentreneurship centres at each technical institution in the sub counties to tap the graduates of trade skills who possess entrepreneurial orientation. They would then become employers of the technician-oriented fellow graduate.
Entrepreneurial ignorance cannot be cured by handing out money, as was demonstrated in the case of the Uwezo Fund. There are promises of more funds by both Azimio and Kenya Kwanza without a clearly defined approach as to how the youth will acquire capacity to absorb the funds productively.
In an earlier article, I had proposed a deliberate investment in entrepreneurship centres of excellence where our youth can be exposed to practical elements of business concept development and implementation, in a mix of short classroom sessions and longer field practice for implementing business concepts.
Entrepreneurial skills
It has been implemented Rwanda with great success, a case study we can bring home. Over 91 per cent of MSMEs in Rwanda are young (less than 10 years old), courtesy of a government programme that provided entrepreneurial skills development and funds for those who showed capacity to absorb it.
Removing entrepreneurship ignorance and financial illiteracy combine both information and behaviour change, which must be deliberate and intense. Once again, a case study exists across Rwanda where programmes by the government have removed the twin problems with significant success rates.
Kenya’s population is estimated to be about 54 million people in 2022 and is growing at approximately 1.99 per cent. About 6 million of these people live in Nairobi, with the informal settlements housing about 3 million.
The youth form a huge chunk of this population, standing at about 65 per cent of the population going by the 1999 census. In the city of Nairobi, Kibera alone houses slightly more than 250,000 people living on less than a dollar a day. Just 1 per cent of Kenyans own most of the wealth of the nation. This is a time bomb.
Patrick Wameyo is a financial literacy coach at Financial Academy and Technologies, and an entrepreneurship coach at The Entrepreneurship Center EA. [email protected].
