President William Ruto speaks when he hosted religious leaders from the Federation of Evangelical and Indigenous Christian Churches of Kenya at State House, Nairobi, July 16, 2025. /PCS
President William Ruto has appealed to leaders across the board to resist the urge to incite the youth and instead work together towards finding lasting solutions to unemployment.
His remarks come in the wake of a wave of youth-led anti-government protests that the government alleged were sponsored by a section of leaders keen on destabilising the government.
The President said the government is making deliberate and intentional interventions to create job opportunities both domestically and abroad.
To date, Ruto said, the labour mobility programme has enabled 400,000 Kenyan youth to secure employment overseas in the past two years, while another 320,000 are fully engaged through the Affordable Housing Programme.
The President made the remarks when he hosted religious leaders from the Federation of Evangelical and Indigenous Christian Churches of Kenya at State House, Nairobi.
“Yesterday I was here with professionals and we agreed that in the next two to three months, the number of youths working under the affordable housing programme will increase from 320,000 to 600,000,” Ruto said.
Ruto added that, besides the housing plan, a further 180,000 youth are earning livelihoods in Jitume Labs at technical colleges and the Tatu City Special Economic Zone.
Describing it as the largest teacher recruitment drive in Kenya’s history, the President said the government has also created jobs in the education sector by recruiting 76,000 teachers, with an additional 24,000 expected to be hired by January 2026.
On economic matters, Ruto said inflation has dropped from a five-year high of 9.6 per cent in October 2022 to the current 3.8 per cent, while the shilling has stabilised from a low of Sh165 to Sh129 to the dollar.
“Our foreign exchange reserves was six billion US dollars, today we have 11.8 billion dollars. IMF had listed Kenya among six countries forecast to default on debt repayment, a month ago they said we have improved from position eight to the sixth largest economy in Africa,” Ruto said.
“Of the six countries they said would default on their debt obligation, five default except Kenya. Today I can tell you the economy of Kenya is stable.”
