Employers push for change of tack to create more jobs

Infrastructure-led economic growth strategy has failed to generate sustainable jobs for the youth in the last decade, an employers’ lobby says.

Federation of Kenya Employers executive director Jacqueline Mugo instead backs investment in labour-intensive sectors such as agribusiness, manufacturing and technology to gradually reverse growing youth unemployment.

“Infrastructure development, though good, does not at the end of the day lead to growth in jobs. If you look at the huge SGR (standard gauge railway) project that Kenya has implemented…, it has not actually absorbed many Kenyans into employment,” she told journalists in Nairobi on Monday.

“What employers are saying is that we have to look at sectors which are likely to help us create jobs that we need.”

Kenya’s economy expanded by an average of 5.7 per cent in four years through 2016, but growth in new decent jobs averaged 4.3 per cent, hugely underperforming the one million a year target.

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New jobs in the formal sector dropped to 76,300 in 2016 from 107,800 in 2015 and 27,300 in 2013.

Kenya has the highest rate of youth joblessness in East Africa, according to the World Bank, with 17 per cent of all young people eligible for work lacking jobs.

Neighbouring Tanzania and Uganda have comparable rates of 5.5 and 6.8 per cent, respectively.

Ms Mugo spoke on the sidelines of a three-day forum on creating an enabling business environment for job creation, graced by International Organisation of Employers president Erol Kiresepi and attended employer federations from 30 African countries.

President Uhuru Kenyatta has signalled a shift in economic growth policy by slowing down heavy spend on infrastructure development in favour of four new priority sectors — the ‘Big Four’ policy agenda.   These are manufacturing, food security, low-cost housing and universal healthcare.