YOUTH ECONOMIC PARTICIPATION

YOUTH ECONOMIC PARTICIPATION.

Young people between the ages of 15 and 25 constitute a fifth of the world’s population. They can be a creative force, a dynamic source of innovations, and they have undoubtedly, throughout history, participated, contributed, and even catalyzed important changes in economic opportunities. However, youth also face poverty,limited employment prospects and opportunities.

Job creation is a key development objective for most economies, Kenya including youth.However, expansion of employment opportunities has not kept pace with the rapidly expanding working age population.The government has to evaluate the sectors with high potential of creating employment opportunities for the youths in Kenya.

Activities with high potential to create jobs include livestock, vegetables (horticulture), rice production, textile and footwear production, and hotels and restaurants. Further, the results imply that the sectors of the Kenyan economy are interdependent and diverse, spanning agriculture, services, and manufacturing. Expansion of one sector has backward and forward linkages with the other sectors. It would, therefore, be important to adopt a comprehensive multisectoral approach in job creation strategy for the country. There is great opportunity to create jobs by supporting further developments in agriculture and services sectors and putting in place robust strategies to enhance investments in manufacturing. 

There is need to support aggressive industrialization and particularly manufacturing ability as a means of stemming secularly declining price of raw material exports. Success in agriculture and services may need to be supported by similar success in industry. In this regard, the more successful countries in Asia, such as China, can offer key lessons on industrial policy directions. 

A key lesson is that all these countries were marked by government intervention in industry and technology. These included efforts to help the firms avoid coordination failures by providing early investments in areas such as training, technology, education, and infrastructure development; supported with strong institutions and regulatory . In this regard, Kenyan youth can:

(i) Promote value addition by supporting agro-based industries.

(ii) Create incentives for investments in manufacturing.