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Every year on World Youth Skills Day, governments, employers and development partners reaffirm their commitment to equipping young people with the skills they need for a rapidly changing world of work. Investment in technical and vocational education, digital literacy and entrepreneurship has expanded, reflecting recognition that young people are among Kenya’s greatest assets.
These investments are essential, but will not on their own solve Africa’s youth employment challenge. Skills must be matched to industry demand, and industry must be creating enough jobs in the first place. In Kenya, for instance, an estimated 800,000 to one million young Kenyans enter the labour market every year. In 2024, the entire economy created just 78,600 formal jobs. No amount of training closes a gap that size on its own.
The human cost is visible in the numbers. Nearly one in five young Kenyans is not in employment, education or training (NEET). Young women are disproportionately affected, with a NEET rate of 38.65%, against 24.54% among young men. Even those who are working are mostly in informal, insecure jobs offering low wages, little career progression and no social protection.
The gig economy has become part of the answer, and part of the problem. Ride-hailing, delivery apps and online freelancing have opened income opportunities for young Kenyans shut out of formal work, absorbing many of the country’s most digitally skilled youth. But this growth has occurred almost entirely within a regulatory vacuum: earnings are unpredictable, protections are absent, and over half of young Kenyans now rely on gig work as their sole source of income.
Too often, the underlying assumption is that if young people acquire the right technical or digital skills, employment will naturally follow. Evidence tells a more complicated story. Research by the African Institute for Development Policy (AFIDEP) on the political economy of youth employment in Kenya finds that outcomes are shaped as much by fragmented policy implementation, weak coordination across institutions, under-investment in high-job-creation sectors and limited private sector engagement, as by skills themselves. These structural barriers constrain opportunity even for educated, well-trained young people.
Preparing young people for work is only half the equation; the other half is building an economy that generates decent jobs for them to enter. For too long, the supply side has emphasised credentials over competency, producing graduates whose training does not match what employers need, compounded by patronage and poor information that keep even qualified youth out of the jobs that do exist.
Government should strengthen the link between education and industry by working with employers to keep training relevant, and by expanding apprenticeships and other work-based learning that ease the transition into work. Greater investment is needed in sectors with real job-creation potential, agriculture and agribusiness, manufacturing, construction, the digital economy and green industries, several of which remain sleeping giants relative to their potential. Young entrepreneurs need affordable credit, business development support, market access and a regulatory environment that helps them build enterprises that create jobs, not just support survival.
Digital labour platforms are already a significant source of youth employment, yet Kenya’s budgetary allocation to information and communications technology remains below 2% of the national budget, even as the digital economy keeps changing shape and AI reshapes the entry-level tasks many young people currently rely on. Labour and social protection policy needs to modernise alongside it, so platform workers have fair working conditions, occupational protections and access to social security. As digital employment grows, the quality of that work must grow with it.
Above all, youth employment policy should be guided by evidence, reliable data on what works, where the gaps are, and which interventions actually deliver, and shaped with young people themselves rather than for them.
On this World Youth Skills Day, we should celebrate the resilience, innovation and ambition of Kenya’s young people. But skills alone cannot deliver prosperity. Real progress will come when investment in skills is matched by investment in job creation, stronger institutions, and policies genuinely designed to help young people find dignified, secure and productive work.
The young people are ready. The question is whether our policies, institutions and economies are designed and resourced to meet them.
The blog was first published by The Star: https://shorturl.at/EzS0y