There is a story of a bright young Kenyan who studied biochemistry in university and graduated with first class honours.
He was passionate about biochemistry and was determined to pursue a career in scientific research.
After applying for and being turned down from several jobs with various scientific organisations, the young man gave up and decided to start a business in the transport sector.
The only problem is that he had not studied transport and logistics nor business management and thus, did not have a clear idea about what starting a business in the transport sector entailed.
There is a story of a bright young Kenyan who studied biochemistry in university and graduated with first class honours. He was passionate about biochemistry and was determined to pursue a career in scientific research.
After applying for and being turned down from several jobs with various scientific organisations, the young man gave up and decided to start a business in the transport sector.
The only problem is that he had not studied transport and logistics nor business management and thus, did not have a clear idea about what starting a business in the transport sector entailed.
To this day, this young person ekes out a measly living in a business venture at which he’s not very good; all because he couldn’t pursue the career for which he was trained.
The story above mirrors the life of millions of Kenyans. They study hard, parents and loved ones save to take them through university and in the end, they end up unemployed, underemployed or mis-employed. Quality of education aside, this type of educational misalignment is costing Kenya billions in several ways.
First, Kenyans are spending billions getting educated in fields they end up abandoning. The hours, efforts and money spent to attain secondary and tertiary education is all wasted when the young Kenyan discovers there are no jobs in his/her area of interest and expertise.
This is despite the fact that from an economic point of view, the country needs that expertise to diversify the economy and start or strengthen numerous industries. Thus, the millions poured into the education of young Kenyans go to waste as they are forced to move away from their knowledge base to pursue careers in other fields for which they did not study.
Secondly, because young people often turn to self-employment to survive, they often end up running businesses badly because they have neither the aptitude, training nor interest to run and manage a business.
Not everyone is an entrepreneur, yet millions are forced to become entrepreneurs.
The informal economy, where most Kenyans are employed, is full of Kenyans who turned to entrepreneurship as an act of desperation. For most, running business is not a well thought-through and strategic venture for which they have been trained; it is the final push for survival. The result is that millions of businesses are not functioning at optimal levels, indeed many are being run very badly, providing subsistence living for those running the business.
This leads to the final point; the presence of millions of poorly managed businesses all of which undermine economic growth. The economy not only misses out from the economic contributions of the knowledge base of millions of Kenyans, billions of man-hours are committed to badly run businesses.
It’s a double whammy for the economy because the investment in education is wasted and businesses that should have never started are created out of desperation. This all leads to wasted training, poor business performance and subpar economic growth.
There is a need to address the education misalignment beleaguering the country if Kenya is to tap into the potential of its population and spur sustainable income growth and economic activity.
