Context
Agriculture is the mainstay of Kenya's economy. Approximately 70 per cent of all Kenyans live in rural areas and depend on the sector for both food and employment. Kenya has a very young population, three-quarters of which are under 35 years of age. However, youth unemployment is around 25 per cent or more, compared to the overall rate of around 10 per cent.
While the agri-food sector bears great potential in terms of income and employment, it is an unpopu-lar work choice among rural youth. The challenge facing Kenyan government, therefore, is to exploit the existing potentials and bring young people into the agri-food sector. However, the country still lacks a sufficiently supportive environment to make this happen. Young people therefore need access to skills-based education and vocational training to equip them with skills sought-after by the private sector.
Objective
Rural youth are benefiting from improved training and employment opportunities in selected value chains of the agri-food sector.
Approach
The project aims to improve the qualification and employment situation of small-scale producers and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the agri-food sector, especially for young men and women (18-35 years).
Together with the global project "Rural Employment with a Focus on Youth (RYE)", funded by the special initiative ONE WORLD - No Hunger (SEWOH) of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), it forms the "Agri-Jobs 4 Youth" initiative. Their joint integrated approach looks to enhance youth employment prospects by better equipping them for the labour market and at the same time increasing the demand for labour and improving labour market function-ing and matching mechanisms.
Enhancing the capacities of governmental and non-governmental actors and the private sector means they can better respond to the needs of unemployed or underemployed rural youth. Supporting sus-tainable youth organisations and networks provides rural youth with critical access to information, inputs, land or financing. Special attention is given to the needs of women and young adults (18-23).
The project also promotes good governance in county institutions and youth organisations to improve service delivery. It also addresses climate-related problems by promoting climate-smart agricultural technologies, innovations and green jobs for sustainable livelihoods.
Results
WE PROMOTE A PERFORMANCE-DRIVEN LEARNING SYSTEM THAT EQUIPS YOUNG PEOPLE TO BUILD THEIR LIVELIHOODS AND SHAPE THEIR FUTURE CAREERS
Quality education and practical skills are critical requirements for successfully entering the labour mar-ket. Consequently, the project assists seven agricultural training centres with institutional and manage-rial capacity support to adequately respond to today's educational needs. 45 trainers were trained, 14 of them from the private sector. The training centres received agricultural equipment for production and processing.
The project further promotes the introduction of student-centred, modular learning concepts (e.g. e-learning and blended learning), advanced teaching methods, improved curricula and learning materials alongside three value chains (passion fruit, poultry and apiculture), and the topic of agripreneurship. This includes expanding and revising ATVET curricula, including teaching materials and digitalisation, and capacity development and scaling up of technical and didactic training of vocational school teachers.
WE EMPOWER YOUTH IN AGRIBUSINESS TO BUILD INDEPENDENT AND SELF-SUSTAINING ORGANISATIONS THAT CREATE OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND FOSTER THEIR ASPIRATIONS
Organised youth can overcome structural challenges affecting young people's engagement in the agri-food sec-tor. To this end, the project supports youth-led apex agribusiness organisations, which involve about 2,000 young people. These organisations are further supported in their organisational and business development and service delivery to members. The project aims at strengthening mandated youth leaders in their advocacy work, giving enhanced visibility and a voice to young peoples' aspirations and challenges.
WE WORK WITH COUNTY GOVERNMENTS TO CREATE FRAMEWORK CONDITIONS THAT FOSTER ECONOMIC AND PUBLIC POLICY PARTICIPATION OF YOUTH
Framework conditions heavily affect the performance of the agricultural sector. The project supported the do-mestication of the National Youth Agribusiness Strategy (2018-2022) in all five partner counties. In the future, the project will support the operationalisation of the same. Policy development taskforces with youth represen-tation now exist in each partner county. The project ran Champions for Change (C4C) training with 66 county officials and seven youth representatives to improve participation. The latter are now significantly involved in the policy development process. The project further supports the county governments in creating youth-friendly policy and business-friendly regulatory frameworks. We are assisting in introducing new participation formats that foster mutually beneficial and structured interactive dialogue between youth and the private and public sectors.
The combination of competency-based qualification offers, improved service delivery and knowledge transfer of youth organisations and increased productivity through ICT-based agricultural extension has led to more than 700 new or additional employment opportunities for young men and women in Western Kenya.
Last update: February 2022