Book tackles challenges facing Kenyan youth

Raphael Obonyo outside what used to be their house in Gomongo, Korogocho on June 14 2013. Obonyo rose from the Korogocho slums in Nairobi to have a decorated stellar resume: He is Africa's representative to the World Bank's Global Coordination Board of the Global Youth Anti-corruption Network. He has been accorded many awards, including this year's prestigious Nelson Mandela Award. PHOTO| PHOEBE OKALL

What you need to know:

  • Obonyo rose from the Korogocho slums in Nairobi to have a decorated stellar resume: He is Africa's representative to the World Bank's Global Coordination Board of the Global Youth

  • Anti-corruption Network. He has been accorded many awards, including this year's prestigious Nelson Mandela Award.

The youth in Kenya face a myriad of challenges, from unemployment to early pregnancies, that they are daily trying to overcome in different ways.

The government has over the years attempted to identify these challenges and prescribed some solutions, most of which have never worked.

Youth activist Raphael Obonyo has over the years been striving to help the youth achieve their potential. Through various newspaper articles, especially in the Daily Nation, he has been

advocating for the government to focus to focus more energy in solving youth issues in the country.

Obonyo's new book, Conversations About Youth in Kenya, reflects on development matters concerning the youth.

So, why would anyone be interested in a book about the conversations that Kenyan youth have when they are in our faces all the time?

Obonyo is among the few youth who defy the study that was released by the East African Institute at Aga Khan University, which revealed that 50 per cent of Kenyan youth would be willing to

make money regardless of the (il)legitimacy of where the money came from.

Obonyo rose from the Korogocho slums in Nairobi to have a decorated stellar resume: He is Africa's representative to the World Bank's Global Coordination Board of the Global Youth

Anti-corruption Network. He has been accorded many awards, including this year's prestigious Nelson Mandela Award.

The 60 page book comprises of the young man's observations of the ills that plague the young in Kenya, from unemployment to being sidelined in activities that would affect their lives, thoughts

that make part of the 60 editorials that he has written in the Daily Nation.

Obonyo marshalls a host of studies and examples of situations that have hit the media umbrage to explain what he proposes the government and policy makers would do to tap into the youth's potential.

He displays his connection to history through the books he has read such as the controversial former American ambassador Smith Hemptsone's memoir, The Rogue Ambassador.