How philanthropy, academia can help drive jobs growth for Africa’s youth

Kenya Youth Employment and Opportunities Project national project coordinator Olivia Ouko speaks during the launch of the MbeleNaBiz Business Plan Competition in Nairobi on July 10. PHOTO | DIANA NGILA 

By GEORGE NJENGA

In Africa, the youth are now being seen as the demographic dividend, a resource which could take
Africa to the next level. Yet they face a lot of challenges, especially in the area of employment. This has made the question of unemployment to become a major issue when we discuss the economic growth and development.

The International Monetary Report Regional Outlook 2019 shows that the rate of entrants into Africa’s labour market is expected to increase by three percent every year and is projected to sum up to more than 200 million people.

Despite this challenge, Africa is believed to be on the rise. The former chief executive of the Economic Commission of Africa (ECA), Dr Carlos Lopes, in address to African ministers said that the continent was on a promising pathway. It has defied naysayers who predicted it would spiral downwards into further conflict and insecurity as a result of poverty and privation.

Over the last decade, Africa has experienced fast economic growth, improved governance, less people affected by complex conflicts and humanitarian crisis.

How do we turn this positivity into an economic impact that would benefit everyone? Since the future of Africa rests on the imagination of the youth, how can academic institutions work with various stakeholders to address the many challenges young people face on the continent?

At a recent meeting hosted by the African Philanthropy Forum held at Strathmore University Business School to discuss the issue of accelerating youth unemployment in Africa, a number of proposals came up.

The meeting brought together academia, government, philanthropist organisations, private sector and experts.

Given the challenges faced by young people in the labour markets, it will take a strategic approach that involves policies, transformation of the current ecosystem and a clear resource investment to effectively address the issue of unemployment.

For academic institutions like Strathmore, the challenges require that we build skills through formal training over time as opposed to just focusing on traditional pathways from education to employment.

Leading scholars and experts have argued that supporting entrepreneurship, including the work of SMEs, through the right policies, can provide an effective solution to the current problems we are facing as a nation and also as continent. The solutions to unemployment lie in re-looking the state of the youth and entrepreneurship.

An evaluation of entrepreneurship education programmes in Kenya by Gichana James Ongwae of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, shows that entrepreneurship is at the centre of technological research, scientific exploration, product creation and market transitions. However, there is need to build capacity in entrepreneurship education at all levels of education, training, research and development.

As a country that is seen as the Silicon Valley in sub-Sahara, we need to empower our youth to be entrepreneurs that are multi- skilled for the purpose of creating technical capabilities, technical functions, social insights and customer value for the realisation of Vision 2030.

For example, agriculture has been seen as key to unlocking Africa’s growth potentiald. For Kenya, where agriculture accounts for almost 70 percent of GDP growth, leveraging our agricultural sector is critical in enhancing food security. But this requires making efficient investments in technologies, innovation, and skilling of the youth.

Kenya, like the rest of Africa, needs agro-business, higher productivity and backward and forward linkages to work.

During our first ever Junior Management Trainee Agribusiness Qualification Programme launched last year in partnership with AGCO Corporation, a global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of agricultural equipment, we admitted 20 youth from various countries across Africa and managed to establish the first ever ACGO Mechanised Learning Farm in Kenya.

The aim of the programme is to harness the potential of the youth in driving Africa’s agricultural transformation and become agenda-setters in the development of a sustainable food production system that is able to increase farm output by utilising agricultural technology more efficiently and enhance food security.

Future of farming

What we have learnt in all this process is that innovation and technology are key for the future of farming, getting the youth to take centre stage in economic intervention and building on international collaborations.

Mechanisation is a crucial input for agricultural crop production and one that historically has been neglected, especially among small-scale farmers in Kenya.

The programme demonstrated that if we skill our youth rightfully, they are able to get employment. This was demonstrated with our 20 students who were able to get employment before the end of the two-year programme.

We hope to have more youths skilled in modern agricultural machinery operation and maintenance. This can attract more investors to comfortably back new technologies, and create jobs by providing a platform where professional mechanics can provide after-sale repair and maintenance.

The other area we are also focusing on is SMEs. The Entrepreneurship Hub works exclusively with SMEs to develop their products and services for scalability.

Dr Njenga is the Executive Dean, Strathmore University Business School. gnjenga@strathmore.edu