NMG in entrepreneurship training for varsity students

Data shows that at least 800,000 young people enter the job market every year. FILE PHOTO | NMG 

By JOHN MUTUA
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Nation Media Group will hold a one-day entrepreneurship forum where university students will meet and get mentorship from Kenya’s top chief executive officers.

The event will draw students from public and private universities with the business executives
picking leaners who they will mentor and progressively train them in readiness for the job market.

“It will be mind-opening and something different, the chief executives should give us something applicable to our generation and how they made it,” said Carthy Macharia, a third-year Economics student at the Thika road-based Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology when she registered for the forum last week.

The one-day forum dubbed ‘Shaping the Future of Entrepreneurship Through Innovation’ will be held at the University of Nairobi on June 15.

The forum is expected to draw chief executives from the private sector including Vivo Active Wear founder and chief executive Wandia Gichuru and Rosemary Okello, founder of the regionally acclaimed Makini Schools.

The mentorship programme is held by Nation Media Group four times a year and comes as the country struggles with a high number of unemployed youths who have been described as a ticking time-bomb.

Data shows that at least 800,000 young people enter the job market every year after completing their secondary and higher education levels but struggle to get employment with a majority considering opportunities abroad.

A 2017 World Bank survey found Kenya had the highest rate of youth unemployment in East Africa, with 17 percent of all young people eligible for work lacking jobs, ahead of Uganda and Tanzania.

A survey conducted by Pan-African research network, AfroBarometer last year revealed that at least 35 per cent of Kenyan youths would leave the country to escape poverty or get a better job highlighting the struggles faced by university and college graduates.