NGUKA PETER: Raila's Sh6,000 monthly promise won’t solve unemployment

Kenya needs strong policy actions to guarantee the growth of its crippling economy.

As the country moves closer to the election period, economic matters have taken the centre stage of political discourse.

On one end, the bottom-up economic model is the talk of the day as it has proved worth capturing the attention of the voters.

On the other side, there seems to be a shift of focus to policies that are geared towards the reduction of youth unemployment.

Political analysts have argued that the paradigm shift of the latter has been informed by the fact that the youths have the lion’s share of the votes.

Recently, the former Prime Minister Raila Odinga said if elected as President his government would transfer Sh6,000 monthly to unemployed youths.

This has given rise to a heated debate on whether such a policy would work and if it's what Kenya needs to end the unemployment crisis.

Research has shown that people getting unemployment benefits might take more time to find a job than they would minus the benefits.

Another concern is whether the country’s economy can finance such an initiative, especially during the post-pandemic period.

According to data released by KNBS in 2019, the country had 9.4 million unemployed youths with age bracket 20-24 having the greatest unemployment rate percentage of 19.2 and age bracket 25-29 having 9 per cent.

For the government to finance such a program, it will need more than Sh800 billion yearly an amount that almost equals our budget deficit for the fiscal year 2021/2022.

Therefore, such a policy will continue to increase our debt burden if adopted.

Kenya already has a strong commitment to providing employment opportunities for the youth.

The problem however exists in the implementation of these policies.

Instead of offering unemployment benefits, the presidential hopefuls should be talking about the expansion of modern sector employment to the youths who have been disillusioned and made dependent by the high rate of unemployment.

The current government and even the presidential aspirants should learn from the demerits of the 2nd and 3rd medium-term plans.

They should come up with policies around taking advantage of opportunities around green employment and realizing the full potential of SMEs.

By enacting the Legal Notice No. 97 of 2016, the government scaled up internships and apprenticeships due to the tax rebate for graduate internship regulations.

This move increased the uptake of interns by the private sector.

The challenge however was the long process of having to get approval from NITA for the exemption to be applied.

The public sector internship program has also helped in enhancing the employability of the youths by giving practical workplace training.

Finding solutions to implementation challenges such as less awareness of the youths and the inadequate budget for the exercise will go a long way in providing more opportunities for the young people.

A policy recommendation to this program would be to have every ministry with its internship budget.

The Uwezo fund which was initiated as a flagship project of the vision 2030 on September 8, 2013, has also had a tremendous contribution to the reduction of the unemployment crisis.

As of 2019 data from the UWEZO fund indicated that more than 61,675 groups had benefited from the fund translating to more than 100,000 individuals.

The greatest challenge that this fund and by extension other funds have experienced is the absence of good legal powers to follow up with loan defaulters.

The funds ought to be established under an act of parliament to guarantee their sustainability.

The incoming government could consider having a long term youth entrepreneurship strategic plan to help unlock the full potential of entrepreneurship skills among the youth.

Economics student at University of Nairobi

Edited by Kiilu Damaris