Enterprise is the defining skill for Kenya’s young generation

Andrew Kio who makes clothes in Nairobi. PHOTO | FILE 

By VIMAL SHAH

The Aga Khan University’s National Youth Survey report that was released last week is a goldmine of insights, most pertinent and juicy.

But it also contained one salient and unavoidable challenge that did not get the airtime it deserved, other than in the Wednesday January 27 edition of the Business Daily.
 

Most media outlets and commentators chose to focus on the “juicy” aspects of the survey – namely that 50 per cent of young people are open to the idea of making money through any means, legal or not, and a further 30 per cent believe that corruption is profitable.

These are worrying ratios but the integrity question pales in comparison to the unemployment situation.

The national rate stands at a staggering 55 per cent ( 62 per cent among women) and here is the really bad news: one out of two graduates are jobless. 

Some 63 per cent of young people in Kenya are worried about unemployment. For a country where the youth form the bulk of the population, these figures are startling, unsustainable and even unacceptable.

Thankfully the findings were not all doom and gloom; there were two insights I found particularly telling with regard to ending unemployment and securing the prosperity of future generations.

According to the survey, one in five graduates is self-employed and even better – 48 per cent of young people prefer self-employment to being employed. Now these are figures we can work with. 

Let’s begin with a confession: when it comes to solving unemployment I have a one track mind – the answer is entrepreneurship because that is what creates jobs. The only way to bring down the rate of unemployment from 55 per cent is to have more job creators.

Every year 800,000 young people enter the job market and a paltry 50,000 get formal jobs; something must give.

We need to raise the number of self-employed graduates from one out of five to three out of five. To do that we need to take the 48 per cent of young people interested in entrepreneurship and build their capacity to become successes.

Our most urgent task is building a conducive environment for their success.

Entrepreneurship is today what education was in the 1960s, 70s and 80s – the defining skill of a generation.

And it’s not that we are dealing with a talentless pool here. Young Kenyans are go-getters: they are industrious, inventive and innovative. All that is required is to harness and channel these talents into profitable enterprise.

Entrepreneurs are not born; they are made. They are forged through knowledge, networking, mentorship and experience. They are weaned on capital and access to markets.