This archive report was first published on 12 July 2019.
On May 17, 2019, Trade and Industrialisation Cabinet Secretary Peter Munya launched a Sh1.5 billion business competition at the Radisson Blue Hotel in Nairobi. The initiative, which aims to alleviate the youth unemployment crisis, will provide funding and business plan training to new and existing youth-led enterprises.
The competition, which will be implemented by audit firm KPMG, will select 750 winners. Five hundred of the successful applicants will each receive Sh900,000, while 250 will get Sh3.6 million each. The World Bank, the main financiers of the initiative, will conduct a rigorous impact evaluation to assess the effectiveness of the project.
According to World Bank Country Director for Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Somalia Felipe Jaramillo, the project does not target youth unemployment directly but through entrepreneurship. In Nigeria, where a similar project was undertaken, evaluation showed that winning businesses were able to employ an average of nine workers in three years compared to less than half of this for those who did not receive the financing.
Official figures show that more than 85 per cent of those who are unemployed in the country are aged below 35 years, the age category that the competition targets. The largest unemployment rate is in the age category of between 20 and 24 years, at 19.2 per cent.
