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Youths take menial jobs to pay for basic needs

Young people at a university graduation ceremony. There are hardly any jobs for most of them.

Alice Wanjiru (not her real name) has learnt the hard way that a university degree is not a guarantee to employment, despite her parents' mantra: Study hard, the future lies in a degree.

Today, Wanjiru has nothing to show for the five years she spent at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology burning the midnight oil studying electronic engineering.

Most of her compatriots at Mukuru kwa Njenga, where she hawks sweets and groundnuts, have never seen the inside of a lecture theatre.

“I thought I was assured of a decent job after university but there are no jobs for me out here. I have to do anything to get cash for survival,” Wanjiru says.

The 24-year-old electronics engineer has also done odd farming jobs to pay for basic needs.

She is a representative of thousands of academically qualified youths engaged in the informal sector.

A 2019 Violence Against Children Unicef survey found that the most common work locations for females aged 18-24 the previous year were shops and kiosks (17.4 per cent).

The other work stations were farms or gardens, formal offices, family dwellings, restaurants, hotels, cafés and bars.

The most prevalent work locations for males of the same age group were farms and gardens (24.1 per cent), construction sites, mines, quarries, formal offices, factories and workshops.

However, a Kenya Youth Agribusiness Strategy 2017-2021 report indicates that most youths eschew agriculture.

It says “the situation is exacerbated by the perception of agriculture as a career of last resort, one of drudgery and low monetary benefits.”

But this perception is changing, according to Samson Ongwae, 23, who says, “Agriculture could have been associated with the poor, the tired and the old a few years ago but we are embracing farming. We are doing everything to avoid unemployment.” 

Unemployment is a major headache in the country. Kenyan universities churn out 50,000 graduates annually and 500,000 from tertiary institutions. Many others return home from overseas studies.

Over 1,000,000 young people enter the labour market annually having either dropped out of school or completed high school and not enrolled in any institution of higher learning.

“However, due to the slow economic growth, corruption, nepotism and demand for experience by potential employers, 75 per cent remain unemployed,” a recent report by United States Agency for International Development says.

As Labour Cabinet Secretary, Ukur Yatani last year advised unemployed graduates to turn their job search focus away from the formal sector.

Yatani, who is now the Treasury CS, maintained that the informal sector is dynamic and expanding rapidly, able to contain a multifaceted skill combination so long as the graduate is creative. 

He challenged graduates to embrace creativity, launch into the informal economy and pursue their dreams.

The informal sector, popularly known as the jua kali sector, include small-scale semi-organised enterprises. They are unregulated and use low and simple technologies, according to the Economic Survey 2012. 

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