When she received the call informing her of her appointment as chairperson of the Youth Enterprise Development Fund, Fatma Barayan had to conduct a quick online search.
She realised her first task on the job would be to make the fund more accessible.
“I will be honest. I did not know there was such a thing as Youth fund when I was appointed. So, if I, Fatma Barayan, a lawyer and leader, did not know about [the] fund, what about the other youth in remote areas?” she said.
As the first woman and first person from the Coast at the helm of the agency, gaining the trust of her new colleagues was immediate priority. She hit the ground running.
Barayan held her first meeting with her new team at the offices of the Cooperatives and MSMEs Cabinet Secretary Simon Chelugui.
She discovered bottlenecks that made the fund relatively unknown among the youth.
“I have always known that for an institution to grow, you must first solve its problems,” she said.
Brayan was born in Likoni subcounty into a family of girls. As a third born, she had to fight her way through school as her parents could barely educate all of them.
After her early education at Consolata nursery and primary schools, she transferred to a branch of the seven charitable Mekaela Academies in Class 5.
In 2006, she sat her KCPE exam and scored 401 marks and was admitted to Loreto Girls' High School in Limuru.
Her parents could not afford the fees at Loreto so she joined Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan Secondary on scholarships, something that appealed to her parents’ religious consideration.
Barayan had hoped to excel in high school as well as she did at primary.
“But due to family challenges, with my mother battling cancer, I only managed a B [plain], which was below my expectation,” she said.
The capital city called again when she was admitted to the University of Nairobi to study law. Instead, she chose to take her course at the Mombasa campus to be close to her ailing mother.
She graduated in 2015 with a second class honours (upper division) degree, and on December 19, 2017, was admitted to the bar.
The mother of two discovered her love for the youth while gaining experience as a lawyer at Apolo Muinde’s law firm in Mombasa, where she helped many young women with their legal issues pro bono.
“I used to do community work generally, empowering women, youth and persons with disability. But then I realised those I helped mostly were young people,” she said.
In 2019, she opened her own law firm, Barayan and Associates. She soon became the lawyer helping tuk tuk, boda boda and matatu operators get out of trouble.
“Some used to pay for my services while some could not so it was pro bono for them. I took cases not knowing whether I would get paid or not. It was just a passion,” she told the Star.
It is through pro bono services that she earned the nickname, 'Mtetezi wa wanyonge' (defender of the weak).
One day, a group of women in Kisauni called her asking for help to get their children out of detention. They had been rounded up in a police swoop, at a time when insecurity had become a problem in the Mombasa settlement.
Barayan managed to get 32 of them off the hook despite the many charges they faced.
The women urged her to run for office, saying she had done a lot to help the community and would do more from a position of influence. That is how she tossed herself into the murky waters of politics.
She ran for the Mombasa woman representative seat on a UDA ticket in the 2022 general election, emerging second with 93,000 votes.
Brayan had done enough to please her party leader, President William Ruto, who then appointed her the chairperson of the agency on January 20 last year.
Once she took over, the first thing she set out to fix was to boost the fund’s growth.
Some departments were understaffed and under-resourced while others were bloated. The fund had 241 employees but some mid-level managerial positions only existed on paper.
“This affected decision making and flow of funds to the few youth who were borrowing,” she said.
Some staff were placed in positions they were not qualified for, while others were operating on expired contracts.
“This affected the disbursement of the funds, with youth forced to wait up to three months for the cash they applied to hit their accounts,” she said.
After the structural reorganisation, she said, there is now more order and funds which reach successful applicants within two weeks.
To motivate the staff, she initiated training programmes for employees to upgrade their skills and knowledge.
The fund’s visibility and awareness were other key challenges she had to tackle. So far she has visited 24 counties to understand why the youth are not applying.
“There was also a problem of budgeting. Some departments had very little allocation, while some had unnecessarily huge budgets. There was a need for a balance,” Brayan said.
This, she said, was partly because there had been no substantive CEO until Josiah Moriasi was appointed in November 2022, which meant some decisions could not be made or implemented.
Barayan said the loan products were also not responsive to the borrowers’ needs when she joined. The red tape involved before accessing the loans was cumbersome.
“Youth fund used to give individual loans, which needed security or collateral. Most of the youth did not have this security like log books, title deeds or other securities,” she said.
In groups, it restricted the number to five to 10 people. According to the lawyer, this locked out larger groups like community-based organisations and Saccos.
“Together with the board, we then came up with a product specifically for CBOs and Saccos so as to reach more youth,” she said.
Another requirement was training for the youth accessing group loans. Offered four times a month, a group could not access the loans without a training certificate. The training fee was Sh1,200 per group, money some of the youth could not raise.
“Some youth just felt it was unnecessary for them to pay the amount, even though they could afford it. This was discouraging for them. We had to get rid of that training fee,” Barayan said.
During her tour of the counties, she noticed that regions with large populations of Muslims generally had a low uptake of the loans. She realised it was because of interests, which is against the Islamic faith.
“We had to come up with interest-free loans called Vijana Qard to target the Muslim youth. But this is not restricted to Muslim youth only,” Barayan said.
The blue economy is one of the new frontiers that the government is looking to tap into and in which it has invested billions.
The fund has also tailored products targeting the blue economy, including training for businesses in the sector.
She has initiated a programme that will allow talented youth to access the market through linkages because the fund is now embedded in the Youth, Creative Economy and Sports ministry.
“Sports is now a big thing and can be commercialised. That is why there is Talanta Hela. Now we are also coming up with an expanded Talanta Loan that can help link talents with the international market,” the lawyer said.
Soon, the fund will launch the Sharia products and the 2022-27 strategic plan.
Uptake of loans by youth was low when Barayan took office, Sh129 million from a Sh655 million target. Disbursements have increased to Sh257 million.
Repayments have also increased because government officers collaborate more.
The lawyer said balancing family life, personal and national duties has been a challenge but she has learnt the ropes and is coping well.
“I spend my weekends mostly in Mombasa with my family,” she said.
Barayan still attends court matters for her law firm and is grateful for the virtual sessions introduced by the Judiciary.