The 1st World Youth Meeting at Bari, Italy ended yesterday where African delegates released a Declaration that recognised the challenges African youth face including unemployment, corruption, poverty, lack of access to meaningful education, climate change effects, and civil wars among others.
The Declaration further demanded that African youth be included in decision making and that poverty eradication approaches focus on entrepreneurship development, specifically through the creation of youth funds.
Josphat Karinga is the Technical Director of Ristech Solutions a Kenyan company he founded in 2003. The company provides a wide array of services for individual and business clients, including assisting them to overcome the obstacles of bureaucracy in the application for government documents, courier services and car rentals.
Yipe.org recently got a opportunity to briefly interview him where he also gave some useful tips on maintaining good customer relationships.
The current economic condition for Kenya is on a down hill while the population growth rate is quite high. This implies there is an increase in unemployment as the new jobs created cannot match the increase in population. A situation is created where the youth are finishing university, college and secondary school expecting to be employed yet the economy cannot accommodate them. This will in the end bring social instability especially with the high cost of education.
But what can the government and the private sectors do to help alleviate the situation that may bring the country to its knees? An initiative such as the Kazi Kwa Vijana was started by the government and has ended as a failure, taking the country back to the maze. The Kazi Kwa Vijana could not have been sustained as we can say the jobs given to them “do not add value” to the economy and the government is spending a huge amount of money in paying recurrent expenses. Also some of the jobs given may seem demeaning to some of the unemployed graduates. Telling an engineering graduate to clean trenches shows that the government has no plans for its citizens who are meant to be assets.
Further, unemployment situations in Kenya have been increased by the high requirements by employers in order to get jobs. Requirement of years of professional experience for jobs in Kenya has made it difficult for the fresh graduates to get jobs and their Kenyan dream of finding that dream job after years of education.
For the country to be able to create employment, the government and the private sector should highly consider embracing entrepreneurship as a source of expanding the economy and reducing poverty. With the shift towards technology, the government can use the youth to enhance and come up with new technologies which will help accelerate growth and achieve Vision 2030.
Some of the ways in which the government can do to help youth embrace entrepreneurship are:
Providing financial assistance and guidance. Many youth have good business ideas but translating these to actual jobs is hindered by lack of knowledge of transforming ideas into feasible and tangible work. Also financial guidance on how to spend the initial finance is necessary as the projected financial statements are is not enough, for example, purchasing of essential assets, marketing and branding, establishing of internal business controls, and book keeping.
Providing mentors to the youth who come up with good business ideas or proposals. The mentors are used to guide the youth especially through the tough times as they have been in the business before and they know what to do best in such situations.
Introducing entrepreneurship as a subject in schools so that the students are able to know early enough how to start their own businesses and succeed. Mentality of students has to be changed from them expecting employment for them to create employment. This should be done for both students in professional courses and those in vocational training. In the earlier years, it was preached in radio stations and songs that at the end of education one will get a good job and this mentality has stuck in the mind of the population. We should therefore start changing the minds of people with regards to this.
Providing tax incentives for young entrepreneurs who provide employment to others. There are difficulties involved with business start ups and therefore the government should recognize this effort by giving the youth tax incentives. This has been done to Export Processing Zones (EPZs) to attract foreign direct investments. Local investments should also be considered important as this brings more stimulus to growth as there are no profit flights.
Patenting of special business ideas created by the young people. This may reduce the chances of the ideas being stolen by other capable individuals or by corporations. Good ideas are known to have been submitted to “wrong” organizations which take advantage of the weak protection laws of ideas. These weak laws demoralize the young people with brilliant ideas who may opt to stay with the ideas for long until they are able to finance themselves. Developed countries are known to have proper laws protecting ideas created by its citizens and developing countries should follow suit.
These are only some of the things the government should take into consideration if it has to help the country become entrepreneurial. The effect of citizens creating job opportunities in the economy cannot be over emphasized and the government has to act fast to improve the livelihood of its citizens.
According to the World Health Organisation, gender-based violence is a major public health and human rights problem throughout the world. Though the assault is carried on in the privacy of the home, the violation is widely seen as a "private" family affair, and for some - a normal part of life.
In Kenya, an estimated 49% of married women were physically abused by their husbands (Borwankar et. al, 2008). Though violence against women mainly occurs in the form of physical and sexual assault; it takes many forms including emotional abuse, verbal abuse, and economic abuse.
Economic abuse includes the controlling of finances; not allowing one's partner to venture into enterprise; taking a partner's money without her permission; denying access to, or knowledge of finances as well as using a partner's finances or credit for personal gain.
Socialisation of the girl child
Women entrepreneurs fall victim in part to economic abuse due to familial socialization from the time of birth. From a tender age, socialization which is the process of inheriting norms, customs and ideologiesdifferentiates girls from boys. As boys grow up, they learn to be the head of their future homes as well as being the main (if not only) breadwinners. Girls in turn are socialized to be the home makers and caregivers.
In some settings, a girl’s day starts early. She wakes up to go fetch water and ensure breakfast is ready before she sets off to school. Her brother on the other hand has the luxury of sleeping in. Between the two, the chances of attaining higher grades are in favour of the boy. Then there is the practice of early marriage that dooms young women to lives where they never have the opportunity to actualise their aspirations.
Though education is one way in which women can emancipate themselves from the grip of the culture of male domination, the education system has only served to perpetuate the proposition that women should be more “arts” oriented than their science oriented brothers. Women are under-represented in tertiary institutions where they would have had the opportunity and facilities to hone their entrepreneurial skills. This in turn adversely affects their business growth potential.
McDowell and Pringle (1992) have argued that women are not only constantly defined in relation to men, but are defined as dependent and subordinate to them as well. This has been manifested in the low numbers of women entrepreneurs in “manly” sectors such as manufacturing. Women tend to operate micro service oriented enterprises with low possibilities for growth. The International Finance Corporation in Kenya has found that despite their potential, women-owned businesses which predominate in trade and service sectors, are smaller and less likely to grow.
And, all their early experiences and nurtured perceptions result in some established women entrepreneurs being disempowered when it comes to making independent decisions about how to spend their business profits as well as the direction for their businesses’ growth. Moreover, though many women empowerment programes focus on entrepreneurship development as a means to empower women, they neglect to design and implement ways to address gender based violence towards so-called “empowered” women.
WHO Controls The Purse Strings?
Then there is the issue of who actually “wears the trousers”, or has control of the household or business budget. Though single-motherhood and female headed households are becoming more common, these homes tend to be poorer than male headed homes. According to the International Fund for Agriculture & Development (IFAD), the reasons are that female headed households tend to have a higher dependency ratio in spite of their smaller average size, and also have less access to resources.
An unfortunate trend has also been recognized where there is the self-perpetuating cycle of these women heads of household also causing their daughters to assume the same roles of unpaid house-help and caregivers, whilst their sons are urged to study so they can in future pull the family out of poverty.
Thus the question for development experts is: what is the use of trying to improve women’s livelihoods while such male dominating norms and perceptions continue to thrive?
Ending the silence
Through the emergence of micro-finance pioneered by Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, financial institutions and policy makers have come to acknowledge the challenges women entrepreneurs face, not least in accessing loans. However once credit is given, who is to say that the beneficiary can keep to the loan agreement if her partner insists on having if not a share then all of the money?
Lack of access to education and opportunity, and low status are correlated to violence against women. Long term socialisation and inaction has meant that many women do not seek help or report abuse when it occurs. Cultural norms, lack of awareness, community pressure and widespread insensitivity of officials have also contributed to the fact that the majority of women who are abused suffer in silence.
Though the educational system needs to take into consideration the inequalities of the girl child when they enroll in school, it is ultimately most vital that there is a committed move to strengthen policy and legal frameworks to recognize economic abuse and outlaw all forms of gender based violence.
Nations of the world are preparing to meet at Copenhagen for the latest round of negotiations to agree on a global treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions. It is expected that reafforestation, and reduced deforestation and forest degradation, will be key solutions to the climate challenge.
It is extremely important, therefore, for Kenya to be seen to support protection and conservation of forests, including the Mau, which at 400,000 hectares is the largest forest complex in East Africa. Twenty-five percent of the Mau has already been destroyed through human settlements, cultivation of crops and monocultures, and grazing of livestock. Along with the other four water towers, the complex supports the livelihoods of more than 70% of the people who live around them. Some rivers from the Mau complex flow into trans-boundary lakes, including Turkana and Natron, the breeding grounds for flamingoes, and Victoria, the source of the Nile.
The value of the Mau complex is enormous, with respect to the various sectors it supports. It plays a significant role in regulating rainfall patterns and the climate, and in making possible agriculture, power generation and tourism. Experts have already warned that the continued destruction of the Mau forest will cause catastrophic environmental damage, resulting in massive food crises and compromising the livelihoods of millions of Kenyans, and the possible collapse of the tourism industry.
While the Kenyan government has a responsibility to ensure that all Kenyans are taken care of, it is also true that no settlements should have been allowed in the Mau forest in the first place. While the government was wrong to encourage these settlements, it cannot hold millions of Kenyans hostage in an effort to justify its own mistakes or appease people it misled. Therefore, the Hon. Prime Minister Raila Odinga and the government are right in demanding that all human settlements in the Mau and other forests cease.
While neither the PM nor the government has all the solutions for the Mau complex, and indeed for all the internally displaced people in the country. Therefore, what the government needs is support both from within and without in order to meet the challenge. Politicians are being hypocritical when they pretend that all displaced Kenyans are not equally in need. National leadership should be seen to care about all Kenyans, and not be driven by self-interest. But when it focuses on only certain communities or regions, it ceases to be national leadership and instead becomes tribal leadership.
With that kind of ethnically-driven leadership, Kenya is doomed. Indeed, it is that kind of leadership that led us to settle people in gazetted forests in the past, allowed leaders to allocate themselves public goods, or incited Kenyans to kill each other after the 2007 election. Kenyans should be commending the Prime Minister for providing the right kind of leadership, and should be encouraging him to move ahead with the ongoing efforts of saving the Mau and all our forests—for the sake of present and future generations.
The community meetings will be low cost activities whose purpose is to collate the views of the youth in the draft constitution. The meetings in the provinces will last between 3 and 5 hours maximum.
The Community Youth Katiba meetings schedule is:
1. Western Province (Busia, Bungoma, Kakamega) 7th December 2009
2. Nyanza Province (Kisumu, Kisii, Siaya) 8th December 2009
3. Rift Valley Province (North Rift, Nakuru, Narok) 9th December 2009
4. Central Province (Nyeri, Thika, Kiambu) 10th December 2009
5. Nairobi Province (North, South, East) 8th and 11th December 2009
6. Eastern Province Embu, Meru, Machakos) 12th December 2009
7. North Eastern Province (Wajir, Mandera, Garissa) 14th December 2009
8. Coast Province (Voi, Mombasa, Malindi) 15th December 2009
9. Collating of the views and Presentation of the memorandum to the CoE on 17th December 2009
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