PERSPECTIVE
Let’s Turn Our Problems
Into Opportunities
By Eugene Wanekeya
I
t always comes as a surprise every
time citizens are captured on camera
asking the government for handouts.
Honestly, I find the ‘naomba serikali’
attitude a bit annoying. Yes! It is the
responsibility of government to create
a conducive environment for citizens to
thrive economically but the reality is, no
government has been able to pull this off,
not even in the developed world. This is a
reality that Kenya and Africa as a whole
needs to accept and figure out how to
innovate around. to a significant percentage of the populace.
The main problem being that the number
of job creators is tremendously out-
numbered by the number of job seekers.
According to the 2017 Human
Development Index, a report by the
United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP), about 4 in every 10 Kenyans of
working age do not have jobs. This amounts
to about 40 per cent of the country’s total
population. Of the greatest concern is that
80 per cent of these unemployed Kenyans
are below 35 years of age. I hold a strong conviction that fostering
a culture of social entrepreneurship
among young people will be the solution
to this challenge of perennial youth
unemployment in Kenya and an end to
the ‘naomba serikali’ mentality.
The country is actually the worst affected
in East Africa with Tanzania at 24 per
cent, Ethiopia at 21.6 per cent, Uganda at
18.1 per cent and Rwanda at 17.1 per cent.
These are very grim statistics considering
the fact that this is the age bracket that
the East African region will rely on in the
coming decades for its socio-economic
well-being.
In as much as the World Bank recently
elevated Kenya into a middle income
economy, most of the benefits of this
economic growth have not trickled down
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A large percentage of young Kenyans
are not sufficiently empowered to be
entrepreneurial that is, they do not
know how to identify potential income
generating opportunities, and when they
do, they do not have sufficient resources
both financial and technical to pursue
these opportunities.
This is keeping in mind the fact that the
businesses that are thriving in today’s
world are those that were created to
address a need in the market. Such
businesses tend to have a market that is
limitless because they exist as long as the
need continues to exist.
If we can find a way of teaching our youth
to turn the social and environmental
challenges that Kenya faces into income
generating opportunities, we are well
on our way to solve the challenge of
unemployment.
Case in point, Kenya is facing various
challenges from food insecurity, lack
of affordable housing, to poor waste
management, among many others. These
in themselves are opportunities that can be
capitalized on to create income generating
opportunities. People will always need
food, they will always need affordable
homes, and they will always need a way
to manage their waste. These can be huge
industries if only the right strategies are
put in place.
It’s about time we as a country stop
looking at temporary fixes for youth
unemployment and put an end to the
culture of youth sitting at home waiting
for jobs to appear out of thin air. We must
teach our young people to learn how to
create new industries out of unmet needs
or expand already existing ones that
don’t seem to be adequately satisfying
consumer needs. Social entrepreneurship
is a low hanging fruit and a no-brainer but
somehow, only a few seem to notice.
Through promoting positive social change,
we can create a generation of young people
ready to turn problems into opportunities.
Eugene Wanekeya is a Marketing and
Communications Consultant and co-
founder of Dumisha Africa. You can
commune with him on this or related
matters via mail at: [email protected].
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