Government Youth-Based Programs Survey Report

Background

Like many other African countries, Kenya faces the formidable challenge of youth unemployment. In a survey, the Federation of Kenya Employers established that youth (15-34yrs), who form 35% of the Kenya population, face the highest level of unemployment at 67% compared to the national average[1]. These findings are supported by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics Census of 2019, which established that youth aged 18-34 constituted approximately 14 million people. In that census, 35% of the 14 million were unemployed or underemployed. The unemployment rate among the youth is more than triple the national average of 10%

Kenya has a dual economy, undergirded by a robust and rapidly growing informal sector and a shrinking or otherwise stagnant formal economy. The 2019 KNBS census established that the informal sector accounts for 83% of youth employment, while the formal economy could only generate 3.1 million jobs overall. This level of unemployment poses a significant challenge to young people and the government alike, as youth have less income security and limited access to financial services for individual and national growth.

To address the challenge of youth unemployment, successive governments, in collaboration with various local and international organizations, have continued implementing several policies to enhance economic opportunities for youth, skill development, and job creation. Undoubtedly, youth unemployment in Kenya limits their economic prospects and has far-reaching socio-economic and political risks to the nation. Therefore, in cognizance of this reality, the Kenyan government has dedicated significant resources and policy programs to equip young people with skills and capacity to create job opportunities and foster entrepreneurial culture. Some of these programs include the Hustler Fund, Ajira Digital, Kazi Mtaani, Public Service Internship Program (PSIP), Sports Fund, Talanta Hela, National Employment Program (NEP), Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF), Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (AGPO), and Kenya Youth Employment Opportunities Project (KYEOP) among others.

Nonetheless, the efficacy and adoption of these youth programs is a subject that requires debate and deeper scrutiny. Questions regarding their adoption, impact, and efficacy continue to emerge, highlighting the necessity of conducting comprehensive evaluations. In other words, understanding these programs’ popularity, adoption, and impact is essential in helping the government and stakeholders improve them to achieve the intended outcomes and address redundancies.

Youth Bridge Kenya is a non-governmental organization involved in youth-based activities relating to their democratic rights, governance and participation, and youth mentorship. We established a need for a national survey to determine youth-based programs’ visibility, impact, and adoption in Kenya. The Kenya Kwanza administration, the harbinger of some of the transformative youth-based programs such as Hustler Fund and Talanta Hela, has the herculean task of solving youth unemployment and ensuring that its policies and programs are effective in addressing the challenges facing the young people. In our role as an organization, we intend to plug our efforts into evaluating some of these programs to assist state departments, ministries, and responsible policy implementers in understanding the reach and outcomes of their programs. In this regard, this report outlines the results of a survey to evaluate the adoption rate, impact, and efficacy of various youth-focused government programs with a ranking system outlining the most effective programs, their successes, and areas of improvement. Our goal is not name and shame but rather to help state departments and ministries improve and identify areas of strengths and weaknesses to deliver better youth-based programs.

Objectives of the Survey

• To assess the knowledge of young people about government programs and policies targeting

the youth

• To evaluate the adoption and success of government-sponsored programs targeting youth

• To create a ranking system of the best-performing youth policies/programs to help

policymakers, state departments, and government agencies to improve and create awareness of

the programs.

Justification of the Study

  1. Addressing a Pressing Issue: Youth unemployment is a formidable challenge in this country. With at least 35% of young people aged 18-34 unemployed or underemployed, addressing the challenge requires targeted and intentional programming to sustain the President’s goal of economic development and social stability.
  2. Limited Resources: Kenya has limited resources to meet its debt obligation, development agenda, and vision 2030. Therefore, ensuring that youth programs are austere, efficient, and effective in utilizing these resources can yield optimal benefits and spur economic growth.
  3. Data-Driven Decision-Making: We live in an era of evidence-based policymaking. Ostensibly, this survey provides concrete insights drawn from national data that can help streamline policy and decision-making among ministries and state departments.
  4. Stakeholder Engagement: The survey involves various stakeholders such as civil society, beneficiaries, policymakers, program implementers, and state department representatives. This engagement with diverse stakeholders is essential in evaluating youth-based programs and addressing youth unemployment.

Methodology

  1. Sampling and Data Collection

We conducted an online self-reported survey involving a sample of 3800 young people across the country between 9th August 2023 and 9th September 2023. The respondents were recruited using a multi-pronged approach involving social media and email invitations to reach diverse groups from the 47 counties. The respondents were required to provide demographic data anonymously, indicate specific youth programs/ policies they had benefitted from, and, based on a Likert scale, evaluate their perceived success and adoption of numerous youth programs. These responses were quintessential in assessing the success and challenges of these programs to improve their mass adoption to attain their intended outcomes. In collecting the data, we ensured special ethical considerations by informing respondents of the purpose of the study and data usage and guaranteeing their anonymity. Further, data collection was based on informed consent and voluntary basis.

  • Variables

The questionnaire was designed to collect data based on four main variables. They included:

  1. Program Awareness: We asked the respondents whether they were aware of each of the ten selected youth programs. We used their responses to evaluate the popularity of each program.
  2. User Satisfaction: We asked the participants to indicate the specific program they had benefited from and rate their satisfaction out of 5, 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. Those rates were used to rank and award scores to the different programs.
  3. Perceived Success: We asked respondents to rate their perceived success or failure of different youth programs, resources, services, and opportunities to determine their approval of the programs. In creating that rating, 5 indicated high success, while 1 indicated low success. We used these scores to order the programs from 1 to 10, 1 being the most successful while 10 was the least successful.
  4. Impact: We asked respondents to evaluate the impact of the different programs, especially on their employability, income levels, and personal growth. These scores provided an insight into the perceived impact of the different youth-based programs.
  5. Delimitations

The sampling technique was purposive as we used contacts from our database to send out social media and email invitations. Secondly, some counties such as Nairobi, Nakuru, Mombasa, and Kisumu were overrepresented based on ease among participants to access digital devices and the internet. In this regard, counties in the ASAL regions were less represented in the survey. The overrepresented counties could likely overstate the outcomes of the survey. However, to address the challenge, we used a 90% confidence level with a margin of error of 5% to take care of the outliers.

Results

Gender

Out of the 3600 surveyed individuals, 58% were male, while 42% were females.

Age

The age distribution of the respondents was as follows: 18-25 year olds were 34%, 26-35 years were the majority (58%), while those above 35 years were a measly 8%.

Program Awareness

We asked the respondents about their awareness of various youth-based programs run by the government. 68% of the respondents indicated that they knew one more youth-based program, while 32% had no idea.

Beneficiaries

Out of the 68% who indicated that they knew about various youth-based programs, we asked a follow-up question as to whether they had benefitted from any of those. Only 42% had benefitted one way or another from youth programs, while 58% indicated they had not derived a direct benefit from youth programs. These findings show that awareness is one thing, and being a beneficiary is another, particularly because most programs have eligibility criteria and application processes that may lock out some of them.

Specific Programs

Of the 42% who indicated that they had benefitted from one or more programs, we asked them to indicate the specific programs. Here, respondents were allowed to select more than one program. Most respondents indicated they benefitted from Hustler Fund at 37%, followed by the Public Service Internship Program at 26%. The other high-impact program was the Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF), benefitting 16% of youth, trailed by Kazi Mtaani at 13%. The other programs benefitted youths by 8% as shown in the chart below.

Program Assessments: Perceived Success

The survey required the participants to assess the different youth programs’ success on a scale of 1-5. The ratings helped us to evaluate whether youths had a high or low perception of their success.

Talanta Hela

Talanta Hela is a reasonably new youth program that aims to monetize youth talents for economic benefit. Being a nascent program, 47% of those interviewed indicated that the program had low success, while only 19% viewed it as a high success. As many as 34% of the participants were neutral, which is attributable to being a new program with insufficient media visibility.

Sports Fund

The Sports Fund aims to provide funding to support arts and sports for social development and the promotion of universal healthcare. However, only 8% of the respondents considered the fund successful in achieving its objectives, while 66% considered it a low-success program. The low success rating is attributable to the program’s newness as many young people are yet to tap its benefits and understand how best to get involved. Further, 6% of the respondents were neutral, showing undecidedness among young people as to whether the program has yielded tangible benefits.

Kazi Mtaani

Kazi Mtaani is a program spearheaded by the State Department of Youth Affairs to provide a safety net for vulnerable youth in informal settlements, especially from the aftershocks of COVID-19. The program employs youth in informal settlements to conduct daily casual work to clean and improve their surroundings, equip them with skills to start entrepreneurial ventures and form social welfare groups. 42% of those interviewed viewed Kazi Mtaani as a successful program, while 47% considered it a low-success program. 11% of the respondents were neutral.

National Employment Program (NEP)

The National Employment Authority runs the NEP and undertakes activities that promote employment and counseling the unemployed. Youths were asked whether they considered the authority to have had success in its objectives. 3% of the respondents considered the National Employment Program (NEP) a high success, 76% considered it a low success, and 21% were neutral about its impact. The low success scorecard is due to the high unemployment rate among the youth, in which case many youths do not consider the National Employment Authority to have made substantial efforts in solving the unemployment problem.

Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (AGPO)

AGPO aims to facilitate businesses owned by youth, women, and persons with disabilities to access government procurement opportunities. The program has been running since 2013, and youths have had a chance to interact with it. The participants that considered it a high-success in providing opportunities to youth, women, and persons with disabilities were 31%, while 37% considered it a low-success program. 32% of the respondents were neutral. The low and neutral responses could be attributed to government bureaucracy in accessing these opportunities, kickbacks, corruption, nepotism, and ethnicity in allocating these opportunities, which act as bottlenecks for fair access.

Public Service Internship Program (PSIP)

The PSIP is a government program that provides college graduates with internship opportunities to gain hands-on skills to enhance their employability, networking, and entrepreneurship. Regarding its success, many youths were optimistic about its impact. Notably, 63% of the participants considered it a high success as many young people benefitted from graduate internship opportunities in the public and private sectors. About 13% of the respondents considered it a low success program, while 24% were neutral.

Hustler Fund

Hustler Fund is a flagship program of the Kenya Kwanza administration aiming to provide digital financial inclusion to promote access to cheap credit to individuals, groups, micro, small, and medium enterprises. Regarding the perception of its success, 71% of the participants considered the Hustler Fund a high-success program as young people can borrow unsecured finances from as low as Kshs. 500. They can improve their credit score incrementally to enable them to borrow more. The ease of access, fewer bureaucratic requirements, and no requirement for security to qualify explain the high perceptibility of the program. Nonetheless, 8% of the respondents considered the program low success, while 21% were neutral regarding its impact.

Kenya Youth Employment Opportunities Project (KYEOP)

The KYEOP program aims to increase employment and earning opportunities for youths aged 18-29 through skill development and entrepreneurial support. It is a targeted program for youths with no formal education or those with a high school or primary-level certification. Regarding its success, 53% of youth participants considered it a high-success program, while 18% viewed it as a low-success program. Only 29% were neutral about the program’s success rate. The high number of neutral and low-success responses are attributable to the fact that the program is targeted, as many of the respondents may not have been eligible to participate in the program or were unaware of actual beneficiaries.

Ajira Digital

Ajira Digital started in 2016 and aims to provide young people with digital skills and training to take up job opportunities in the emerging gig economy. It empowers young people to thrive and prosper in the digital world. For the seven years of existence, 63% of the participants considered it a high-success program in empowering youth, while 21% considered it a low-success program. Only 16% of the respondents were neutral.

Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF)

YEDF is a flagship project of the vision 2030 under the social pillar. It promotes enterprise development to increase the young people’s economic and nation-building participation. It achieves its mandate by giving youth-owned enterprises loans, providing market support, facilitating linkages between youth-owned businesses and large enterprises, and facilitating youths to acquire jobs abroad. Regarding the perception of its success, 68% of interviewees considered it a high success, while 21% considered it a low success program. Further, 11% of the respondents were neutral about its achievements.

Program Rankings

The rankings of the programs based on low and high success scores are as follows:

Outcomes

The findings of this survey revealed several outcomes quintessential for their improvement.

  1. Challenges in disbursement: delays in the disbursement of funds emerged as a common challenge facing many of the programs, which hindered their immediate impact on youth. That explains why some programs had lower scores of success than others.
  2. Tailored Support: Programs that provided youths with tailored and streamlined support, such as mentorship, training, skill development, and access to financial support, were more likely to be considered high-success programs by beneficiaries.
  3. Monitoring and evaluation: Programs with robust monitoring and evaluation systems and feedback mechanisms had higher chances of being considered high-success than those without.

Policy Recommendations

  1. Public Awareness: Lower-ranked programs need to enhance their media visibility and adopt comprehensive marketing approaches to increase their adoption and support by young people.
  2. Program Improvements: Lower-ranked programs should streamline their application process, reduce administrative bottlenecks and disbursement delays, and provide comprehensive support services to raise their impact and effectiveness.
  3. Resource Allocation: Donors, partner agencies, and ministries can use these findings to prioritize funding for high-success programs such as Hustler Fund and PSIP to scale them up to increase their social and economic benefits to the youth.

[1] https://www.fke-kenya.org/policy-issues/youth-employment