World Bank plan to hire 11,000 youths

A Sh4.6 billion youth employment initiative was on Wednesday launched in Nairobi, confirming the realisation among policy makers of the danger that mass joblessness poses to Kenya’s economy.

The World Bank-financed project, to be jointly managed by the government and the private sector under the Kenya Youth Empowerment Project (KYEP), promises to immediately offer salaried internships to 11,000 youths who will earn Sh6,000 a month besides being equipped with skills to help them gain formal employment.

At 11,000, the number of internships is thrice the number of recruits into the police force every year while the Sh6,000 stipend is equivalent to what the government planned to pay contracted teachers under a scheme that stalled under a cloud of opposition from the Kenya National Union of Teachers.

World Bank support to the programme is hinged on a finding last year that youth unemployment tops the list of risks to Kenya’s stability and economic progress.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga said an additional $1.5 million from the Rapid Social Response Grant (RSR) window will be provided for the project.

Recruiting the interns at the constituency level should help the government improve household incomes and lay the foundations for enterprise and job creation in all corners of the country.

The constituency-based youth empowerment programme is also being seen as a test case of how the government plans to deal with rural poverty and tackle social disparities in the population.

The Kenya Private Sector Alliance that has been picked to manage the internship programme said beneficiaries will be chosen from every constituency and will be attached to local enterprises in the manufacturing, tourism, energy, financial services sectors, and ICT centres for up to six months.

These sectors are aligned with government priorities for growth as outlined in the economic blue print--Vision 2030.

The Sh6,000 stipend will be paid to them through mobile money transfers at the end of every month, according to Carol Kariuki, the CEO of the Kenya Private Sector Alliance.

“The youth will also receive additional payment via their mobile phones for a period following completion of the internship to assist with the monitoring and evaluation process,” she said.

Only those aged between 15 and 29 years with at least eight years of formal education can take part in the internship programme, signalling that primary and secondary school graduates are the target group.

Those aged between 15 and 17 will take their internships in the informal sector in line with the labour laws that prohibit the engagement of underage people in formal employment.

“We are in talks with employers in the various sectors in readiness for deployments,” said Ms Kariuki.

The programme aims to put 50 per cent of Kenya’s estimated six million unemployed youth in formal sector jobs or self-employment within six months after the internship.

KEPSA says it has an initial budget of Sh1.2 billion for the youth internship programme which kicks off in the next two months.

The money is part of the Sh4.6 billion grant from the World Bank.

World Bank support to the programme comes in the form of a loan with a 40 year maturity period to be serviced by the taxpayers.

Recruits for the internship programme will work under mentors in environments that help them acquire practical entrepreneurial and business management skills.

The coaching is expected to impart in the interns, skills that make them employable in the formal sector or gain self-employment.

Kenya has about 14 million young people aged between 15-30 years, accounting for more than 36 percent of the population.

That number is expected to rise to 17 million in two years and hit the 24 million mark in 2017.  

A recent survey by the office of the Prime Minister found that almost 38 per cent of Kenyan youth are neither employed nor in schools.

Creating employment for the youth is part of the government’s long term plans to alleviate poverty and crime.

Statistics from the Kenya Youth Empowerment Programme, indicate that 200,000 new jobs have been created since the launch of the Sh6.6 billion Kazi Kwa Vijana programme — an initiative of the Youth affairs ministry launched in 2009 to enable school leavers work in community projects such as water harvesting, repairing bore holes, roads and cleaning informal settlements and planting trees.

But a recent UN Habitat report—The State of Urban Youth 2010-2011—found that the Kazi Kwa Vijana jobs are temporary and labour intensive, leaving out females.

The report says that the difficulty of securing decent jobs is one of the major reasons for young people’s poor access to economic opportunities.

According to the survey, 37 per cent of the youth in Nairobi completely have no access to any economic opportunities while 25 per cent have moderate access to jobs.

On Thursday, Prof Helen Sambili, the Youth Affairs minister said “I urge the youth to take advantage of the programme as it seeks to address the problem of lack of skills and work experience.”

A similar programme launched in Canada in 1997 has been credited with creating about 9,000 internship opportunities for the country’s youths as it places them thereby enabling the young people gain skills and experience for future employment opportunities.

The Canadian programme sets 50 per cent of the internship opportunities for young people who have not completed high school or face multiple barriers to employment, 30 per cent for high school graduates and 20 per cent for youth who have graduated from College or University

But Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi has warned that the programme risks creating a culture of dependency on handouts.

“Youths should be active and should not depend on occasional handouts from the government. Without creating the right mind set in the youth, such a programme could stop the youth from being creative,” he said.