How entrepreneurship can create alternative employment opportunities for Kenyan youth

It is just a week to the on-coming Global Entrepreneurship Summit (GES) in Nairobi, which is expected to convene over 150 entrepreneurs from around the world.

The first of its kind in Kenya, the GES will provide a platform for a number of local entrepreneurs — including social entrepreneurs —among them youth and women to network with investors, policy makers, and industry experts.

The local entrepreneurs will receive training, interact with reputable entrepreneurs from around the world, and showcase the potential that their businesses have for growth. These entrepreneurs will learn new skills and get business advice from the experts before joining around 1,000 participants in the summit.

It is expected that the GES will bring into light the potential that entrepreneurship offers to grow the economy, especially in the creation of jobs by the youth for the youth.

With unemployment levels standing at 40 per cent, with 75 per cent of this population being  young people aged between the ages of 18 and 38, the situation has been described as a ticking time bomb. Furthermore, education prospects do not necessarily guarantee young people an entry into the job markets.

Every year, over 50,000 fresh graduates, mainly young people between the ages 22 and 32 begin their job search, but very rarely do over half of them find the jobs or even careers of their choice. Kenya,  after South Africa, has one of the most competitive job markets in Africa

Private sector participation in the creation of employment and new jobs for young people in Kenya has dwindled in the recent past as companies, especially in manufacturing, struggle to cut down due to rising costs of production and increase in taxes.

NETWORKING OPPORTUNITY

“This is a key area that previously guaranteed young graduates of jobs, but in the last few years the numbers have gone down,” explains Mr Raphael Obonyo the external youth adviser to the United Nations.

However, the biggest challenge that most young Kenyan entrepreneur’s face is how to network and meet potential investors, penetrate new markets and generally interact with other like-minded entrepreneurs.

“This lack of know-how on how to meet, or approach potential investors, hinders entrepreneurs from exploiting the business potential that the country has to offer and it creates a quadrupling effect on the widening unemployment gap of unemployability amongst the youth,” states Mr Obonyo.

Without business networking, most entrepreneurs are forced to learn though mistakes, some of which provecostly to their businesses.

“To young entrepreneurs who have got no practical know-how in entrepreneurship, networking provides them with an insight on how to avoid common potholes in their industry,” says Mr Obonyo.

The GES will provide young entrepreneurs with the networking and tools that they need.

“There is nothing as satisfying to a country, than when young people are involved in alternative job creation for fellow youth. Entrepreneurship is the key to that success,” Mr Obonyo shares.

With the high rates of unemployment, many young Kenyans have taken to social entrepreneurship — with a good number of them looking into e-commerce and on-line freelancing as sources of employment. A number of young entrepreneurs in Kenya are today managing companies and businesses that started off online.

A good example is Alphonse Juma, who started his own website solutions development company in 2010.

A fresh IT graduate then, Alphonse started off Oracom Web Solutions, a web solutions development company at a cyber café and later set up his company website where he advertised his web-design services.

Within a year he had built a name for himself. Referral business from satisfied clients saw him grow and he went on to set up an office and employ three more people.

His business — Oracom Web Solutions Ltd has now grown from the initial Sh2000 capital to the current Sh20 million in value, with a turnover of between Sh600,000 and Sh800,000 per month.

LIMITED JOB OPPORTUNITIES

Mr Obonyo encourages the youth to take up social entrepreneurship.

“Go out there. Identify a problem and seek for ways to address it, technologically or otherwise. This way, you will have changed many lives, as you will have created not only a solution to existing social gaps in the society, but a steady employment for yourself and many others,” he says.

With limited job opportunities,  institutions of higher learning need to beef up their degrees and diploma programmes with specialised courses in entrepreneurship, Obonyo notes.

“This will equip fresh graduates and diploma holders with the knowledge to do with their ‘papers’, apart fromformal employment,” he says. Entrepreneurship allows young people to fully shape their future and not just waste their productive years chasing after elusive jobs, he adds.

The Kenyan government has previously attempted to find a solution to youth un-employment through the Kazi Kwa Vijana (KKV) initiative in 2009, which was funded by the World Bank. However, KKV collapsed in 2011 after claims of gross cash mismanagement and misappropriation of funds. Approximately 300,000 young Kenyans employed in the KKV initiatives were left without a source of income when the programme was brought to an abrupt halt.

In 2013, President Uhuru Kenyatta re-launched the National Youth Service (NYS) a youth training, empowerment and employment programme that Government says has so far created employment opportunities and transformed the lives of over 10,740 youth.

SKILLS GAP

There is a looming skills gap in IT, extraction and manufacturing sectors and earlier this  year, Fred Matiang’i, the cabinet secretary for Information, Communication and Technology noted that a perennial lack of skills in Kenya could hamper services delivery in projects designed for the national government.

“There are inadequate IT skills in the government, and there is need to develop local IT talent,” added the CS.

According to Mr Obonyo, it is not just the lack of IT skills that poses a problem, with Kenya recently venturing into developing mining and oil and gas sectors, the lack of a skilled workforce needs to be seriously addressed.

These sectors need skills in geology, mining and mineral processing as well as marine resources extraction. 

According Deloitte’s third annual “Global Human Capital Trends 2015: Leading in the New World of Work” report released in March this year; globally, there exists a serious skills gap at all work levels that organisations are struggling to address. The survey was conducted among over 3,300 HR and business leaders in 106 countries.

In Kenya, technological advancements are making many skills redundant, and outpacing the limited supply of talented workers.

“Innovation and human capital are keeping CEOs awake at night,” says Sammy Onyango, Chief Executive Officer Deloitte East Africa.  

With the new National Youth Policy guidelines now in place, there is hope that the Kenyan government will seek novel ways to address youth unemployment.

“I believe that government needs to develop a robust youth policy to address the needs and concerns of young people, develop vibrant programmes, and harness entrepreneurship among youth in the country,” remarks Mr Obonyo.