OPINION| Youth Key To Country’s Development Agenda And Should Be At The Core Of Planning

By Victor Bwire

NAIROBI, Kenya, Mar 23- That Kenya is endowed with an energetic, vibrant, talented, and creative youth population but who are wallowing in unemployment is not in question.

The 2019 census put the youthful population -between 0-34 years at 75 percent, and the country’s blueprint for development, the Vision 2030 promises to create a globally competitive and prosperous nation with high-quality life by 2030 through the provision of sustainable employment to the youth in both the formal and informal sectors.

It’s 8 years from the end of the vision, yet figures on youth unemployment, underemployment, and related in the country are scaring us.

The National Council for Population and Development (NCPD) in an advisory entitled “ Population Age-Structure and Demographic Dividend in Kenya”  notes that youth unemployment in Kenya remains a significant challenge to the country’s development efforts even as the country works to reap the benefits of the demographic dividend- a term used to refer to a country’s demographic window of opportunity for accelerated socio-economic growth (this happens of those aged less than 15 years year falls below 30 percent of the total population while the proportion of those aged 65 years or more remains less than 15 per cent of the total population.

Outside the advantages that would come with the country achieving the democratic dividend, especially increasing the population with a high proportion of people in the working ages (15-64 years) relative to the rest of the population thus spur national development, the country is still struggling with access to quality and affordable health, education, skills, employment especially for the youth, putting our pace for development efforts against Vision 2030 a bit discouraging.

As usual with policy development preparations, the country has a demographic dividend roadmap that are guiding her efforts to that end.

The 2019 census shows that the country is on course to attaining a less youthful population age structure and obviously a lot is being done in access to health through the implementation of universal access to health, free primary and secondary education, revamped technical and vocational and skills development initiatives but doing badly in income generation and youth job creation and by extension high unemployment rates especially the youth.

The NCPD advisory notes however that while a lot has been done to expand learning and schooling opportunities, its concerning that there are still high proportions of children and youth who had never attended any schooling/learning institutions in the Northern and North-eastern counties.

The report quotes figures from the National Crime Research Center indicating that some of the challenges associated with high youth unemployment that is highly educated and skilled is high youth involvement in criminal activities including organized crimes that largely spring up mostly around elections times, violent extremism, lake, and sea piracy, carrying contraband, cattle rustling and related.

The National Cohesion and Integration Cohesion Commission is also quoted noting that there is a rising number of youth-dominated criminal gangs, especially in the major urban centers such as Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu that threaten peaceful cohesion.

This is attributed to the need for income to meet the youth’s financial needs.

The recent national conference on youth job creation hosted by the Partnership for Africa Social and Governance Research (PASGR) in collaboration with Centre for Africa Bio-Entrepreneurship (CABE) and Alternatives Africa, observed that youth engagement in agriculture as a source of employment is significantly impaired by the policy and regulatory environment, majorly due to lack of sufficient timely information consequent to limited investment in agricultural value chain research. 

Additional challenges that hinder effective youth participation in the agricultural sector in Kenya include inadequate skills and knowledge, lack of appropriate and relevant sector information.

Others include limited access to financial services, negative perception and attitude to agriculture and little agricultural innovation to enable youth to cope with climate change challenges.

A focus on a subsistence approach to agriculture rather than commercialization is also a significant driver of low productivity.  

The policy and regulatory environment also remain a significant barrier to youth engagement in agri-preneurship, partly because of the limited investments in research and technology development that have not translated into actionable evidence.