More than 5,000 youths are currently undergoing a business development skills training, equipping them with the necessary skills to start and run their own enterprises.
This is part of the National Youth Opportunities Towards Advancement (NYOTA)—a five-year government project with the overall goal of increasing employment, enhancing earnings, and promoting savings for vulnerable youth nationwide. It is supported by the World Bank.
The initial training targets youths in four counties of Bungoma, Busia, Kakamega, and Vihiga, before expanding to other regions with about 1.4 million applications for the NYOTA programme from across the country.
Beneficiaries will get a start-up capital of Sh50,000 towards their business upon successful completion of the training.
According to the State Department of MSME Development, which is implementing the programme through the Micro and Small Enterprises Authority (MSEA), the start-up capital will be issued in two batches of Sh25,000.
Sh3,000 in each of the batches will be deposited in the Haba Haba saving scheme that is being run by National Social Security Fund (NSSF).
At least 100,000 youth aged between 18 to 29 years, and up to 35 years for persons living with disability, will benefit from the business grant in three cohorts.
The first cohort will comprise 54,000 beneficiaries, while the second and third cohorts will benefit 30,000 and 16,000 beneficiaries respectively.
Cooperatives and MSMEs Development CS Wycliffe Oparanya, on Monday, during the project update in Nairobi, said his ministry expects to roll-out training rapidly across the other seven clusters.
“After completing classroom training in each cluster, the phased disbursement of the business start-up capital to the trained beneficiaries will commence to enable them launch their businesses. Subsequently, they will receive hands-on support from business development experts to incubate their ideas,” said Oparanya.
He said the official launch of the NYOTA Project will coincide with the commencement of disbursing start-up capital to the trained beneficiaries in cluster 1 and will be presided over by President William Ruto in a few weeks.
The other NYOTA Project interventions are structured around improving youth employability through skills development, apprenticeship certification, and work placement.
by MARTIN MWITA
