We must confront challenges facing our youth

Kenya’s under 35 are 70 percent of the population with a similar percentage being unemployed. By 2025, one quarter of the world’s under 25 will be Africans.

In Africa eight out of 10 persons are self-employed, underemployed or unemployed. Therefore, creation of jobs and sustainable entrepreneurship for the youth is urgent.

Imagine these realities, pictures and scenarios. Unemployed youth idling in key urban areas and rural market centres. Sexual debut at age 14 or less.

Commercial sex workers among children, adolescents and young persons. Incessant youth migration from rural areas to urban centres.

Youth hawking 24/7 in the middle of a highway. Youth drug and alcohol addicts; the “Muguka” generation. High prevalence of HIV/Aids within the 15-24 year cohort.

ACHIEVEMENT

Burnt learning institutions. Youth for hire during the electoral season. Young people recruited into terrorism. Youth who crave to “flying out” of Kenya to greener pastures.

Female youth headed households. Middle and upper class youth partying and involved in indecent acts. The neglected boy child. Majority in remand and prison population being youth under 25. This was the 2000s and now 2010s. What of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s in Kenya?

Majority of those who fought for independence led by Dedan Kimathi were under 30. Uneducated as many were, these young persons embraced the imperative of sacrificing their lives for freedom and land.

A significant number of the first Cabinet, permanent secretaries and senior public servants were under 30. Only a few had worked under the colonial regime.

JOBS

Then you were not really asked for “experience” to be employed. The educational system at the dawn of independence produced employable young people; others had opportunity to study abroad — for example, through Tom Mboya’s American “Airlift” and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga’s Eastern Europe initiative.

Employers went to schools to recruit Form 4 and Form Six graduates after their final year mock examinations.

Young people easily gained entry into the private sector and parastatals. The golden decades for the youth were the 1960s and 1970s.

The four decades from the 1980s to the 2010s have witnessed phenomenal decline in youth fortunes.

Youth were a pivot of the pro-democracy movement of the 1990s. Hordes were killed, detained and rusticated from universities and other tertiary institutions.

Even the leadership of young parliamentarians (Bearded Sisters and Young Turks), intellectual and civil society activists were not spared.

LEADERSHIP

And yet by 2022, about six million youths (18-35) in Kenya will be voters. Today youth energy, vibrancy, knowledge, and versatility are grossly underutilised.

Youth potential is largely dormant. So far, the vote has never addressed the youth agenda. Youth non-participation in the actual vote could be expressive of a cynicism about the electoral outcome.

Young people have the capacity to play leading roles in the country’s economic transformation and rebuilding the political system into a more trusted one in tune with public expectations and aspirations.

The youth are themselves the real experts on matters concerning their generation and are potentially change makers — including in technology, start-ups, innovation, sports, music, general culture, et cetera.

Given the above gloomy picture but also emerging opportunity, I pose the following concern.

Consider in 15-20 years when the current crop of young people are at the helm of Kenya and Africa.

What country and continent do we envision if a Marshall Plan of youth re-socialisation, mindset change and societal accommodation is not rolled out?

DEMOCRACY

In other words, does it make sense to consign in the periphery 70 percent of one’s most potent human resource?

Why have we tolerated an educational system that produces graduates who must be subjected to further employability training?

As stated, in the 1980s and 1990s, the youth, dissatisfied with the one-party status quo, were crucial drivers of the pro-democracy movement.

They agitated for the return of multiparty politics and invested their youthful zeal in the quest for the Second Liberation. Little did they know political liberation is not synonymous with economic emancipation.

The 2010 Constitution recognised the youth sector and youth rights in Article 55. During President Mwai Kibaki’s tenure, a Youth ministry was created.

Today there are under 35s in the National Assembly, Senate, County Assemblies and especially within the ranks of the executive branch of county governments.

Are these co-opted into elite politics and administration or do they champion the Youth Agenda?

FUNDS

The national government has created a policy, legislative and programmatic framework to deal with the youth agenda through the National Youth Service Act, the National Youth Council Act, the National Youth Employment Authority Bill, 2015 (which instead became a 2016 law ushering in the Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (Agpo) — for youth, women, persons with disabilities and other marginalised groups).

The national government has also created Youth Fund, Uwezo Fund, Women’s Fund, and the Gender Affirmative Action Fund. Some counties have followed suit.

NYS faces serious challenges due to incipient corruption and recent budget cuts while the National Youth Council has been slow in taking off.

It was originally a system of organising youth from the grassroots. Politicians, then as of now, were and still are fearful of organised youth power.

Many young people have not been helped to develop the capacity to profitably utilise the funds allocated to them. An endemic skills gap plagues the youth.

POLICY

Where do the youth organise themselves from? In political parties, they are relegated to “youth leagues” instead of being mainstreamed.

Their numerical strength is not translated into redemptive power. Counties have youthful senior people where and when the criterion of “experience” is not prioritised.

County assemblies have many young legislators including a Young County Assemblies Caucus.

Agpo is becoming an important site for nurturing young entrepreneurs. Several counties have youth services, including Meru Youth Service, Makueni Youth Empowerment Service, Kisii and Nyandarua youth initiatives.

Young people are increasingly engaging county budget-making processes to ensure county resources are committed to youth programmes. There is a push for youth friendly policy and legislative frameworks in the 47 counties.

Youth should first and foremost organise themselves in their own institutions. This should be within community associational life, regular civil society, faith sector, the private sector, co-operatives among others.

Only youth led and driven organisations interacting with national and county governments, NGOs, the international development community and private sector can begin to genuinely address the challenge.

So how does the future look? We must start with an interrogation of where the youth are. What is their perception of the problems and potential solutions?

Prof Kibwana is the governor of Makueni County.