By Elizabeth Kimanzi
Laikipia University
Youth and employment in Kenya is a story of a generation full of potential, but short of opportunities. Walk through any street in Nairobi, Kisumu, Eldoret, Mombasa or even Litein and you will meet them. Young men and women with certificates in their bags, business ideas in their heads, and fire in their eyes. They are graduates, innovators, hustlers and creators. They can code an app in a bedsitter in Kayole, farm tomatoes in Kitengela with YouTube knowledge, sell clothes on TikTok live at midnight, and edit videos on a phone that is worth less than ten thousand shillings. They have the energy to build a nation, but the question that keeps coming back every single morning is, where are the jobs.
Kenya is one of the youngest countries on earth, with over seventy-five percent of our population being under thirty-five years old. Every year, nearly one million young people leave colleges, universities and technical institutes and join the job market. Yet the formal sector, the government and big companies combined, can only absorb a small fraction of them. The rest are left to figure it out on their own. The result is a generation whose talent is being wasted in waiting.
For many, the journey after campus is not employment, but tarmacking. A first-class degree ends up photocopied fifty times and dropped in offices that never call back.
A diploma in engineering ends up being used to repair bicycles by the roadside. Interviews become endless, and the common requirement of three years experience for an entry-level job becomes a cruel joke to someone who just graduated yesterday. The mental stress that comes with this is real. Many young people fall into depression, anxiety, and drug abuse not because they are weak, but because they feel abandoned by a system they trusted.
So what do they do? They adapt. The Kenyan youth did not wait to die, they created their own economy. The boda boda rider with a helmet written "God is my provider" is a graduate in finance. The mama mboga with an M-Pesa till that transacts twenty thousand shillings a day is an economist who understands supply and demand better than many in offices.
The young man doing content creation in Sheng is employing a cameraman, an editor and a scriptwriter; he has created three jobs where the government could not create one. This is the hustle economy, not because they love hustling, but because the system left them no choice. From selling smokies in town, to washing cars, to farming kienyeji chicken in the village, the youth are proving that they are not lazy, they are just not employed.
The gap still exists for several clear reasons. First, there is a serious skills mismatch. Our universities and colleges teach theory for jobs that died ten years ago, while the market today needs digital marketing, artificial intelligence, plumbing, electrical wiring, welding, agribusiness, video editing and coding. A student can graduate with a degree but still not know how to write a simple business proposal or create a CV that can pass an online system.
Second, there is the problem of access to capital. A young person in Litein, Kericho or Bomet has a brilliant idea for dairy processing, honey packaging or poultry farming, but where is the collateral for a bank loan? Youth funds like Youth Enterprise Fund and Uwezo Fund exist on paper, but the paperwork, the long queues, the corruption, and the fear of being listed on CRB kills the dream before it even starts.
Third, we have for long promoted a white-collar mentality. We were told from primary school that success means a suit, a tie and an office in Upper Hill or Westlands. We were never told that farming can make you a millionaire, or that fixing phones in Luthuli Avenue, doing nails in a salon, or being a professional barber can pay more than an internship that pays fifteen thousand shillings.
But the most thrilling part of this story is that the Kenyan youth are finally winning, slowly but surely. The internet has become the biggest employer that no one expected. A twenty-two-year-old in the Rift Valley is earning dollars on Upwork, Fiverr and Remotasks without ever going to Nairobi. A girl in Nakuru is selling her beadwork and crochet on Instagram and shipping to the United States.
Young farmers are using TikTok and Facebook to learn smart farming, zero grazing, and greenhouse farming and making one hundred thousand shillings from a quarter acre of land that their parents thought was useless.
The government's digital hubs, Ajira program, Jitume labs, and the rise of remote work have cracked open doors that were locked for decades. Even the sports and creative industry is now employing thousands. Musicians, comedians, footballers, dancers and radio presenters are all youths who refused to wait for a formal job.
The solution going forward is no longer just to create jobs, it is to create job creators. We need to fund the jua kali sector, respect blue-collar skills, teach practical entrepreneurship right from primary school, and give youth affordable internet, affordable data and affordable capital, not just lectures and promises. We need to connect youth with mentors, with markets, and with real skills that pay.
Kenya does not have a lazy youth, Kenya has an unemployed youth, and there is a big difference. This generation does not need pity, it does not need long speeches on Youth Day, it needs a platform. It needs someone to trust its crazy ideas, fund its small starts, and stop asking for experience where passion is enough. It needs to be told that it is okay to start small.
Because a generation full of potential cannot be short of opportunities for long. Sooner or later, it will create its own opportunities, and when it does, Kenya will never be the same again.
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