Every year, World Youth Skills Day is marked by discussions around equipping young people with the skills they need for employment, decent work, and entrepreneurship. Across the globe, governments, educators, and development partners invest billions in programs designed to bridge the gap between youth potential and market demands.
However, with a fast-growing youth population and inadequate job opportunities in both the formal and informal sectors; graduates, skilled professionals, and unskilled workers all competing for too few opportunities, it is time we rethink and adapt our approach towards preparing the youth to drive our economies.
The formal job market, which offers decent work cannot absorb the growing number of young job seekers. Even with the best technical skills, many youths still face limited employment options. For instance, in Kenya, 67% of over 30 million people in working age are youth who are unemployed or underemployed, thus it is difficult for formal sector to absorb them.
Entrepreneurship thus offers a promising path for young people to create their own opportunities and for other youths that are seeking employment. This is evidenced by bustling markets within formal and informal settlements, along urban and rural roadsides, and across digital platforms, mostly by thousands of youth entrepreneurs working tirelessly day and night.
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These are the vendors selling fresh groceries, boda boda riders transporting people and goods, jua kali artisans welding brilliance into steel, a café blending a cocktail juice of carrot, sugarcane, ginger and turmeric; a nearby tailor designing the latest designs and jua kazi professionals developing business ideas and giving business solutions.
These are Kenya’s survivalist ventures born of necessity that keep millions of families afloat, yet many never grow beyond the daily hustle to create employment opportunities for the unemployed and drive the economy. Most of these businesses operate informal due to obstacles such as limited access to capital, lack of mentorship, inadequate entrepreneurship skills, and an unsupportive regulatory environment.
Whereas we are gradually shifting from traditional model of training that focuses heavily on employability to equip the youths with skills for empowerment and entrepreneurship, the discussions around youth empowerment remains overly fixated on ‘formal sector and decent jobs’. This leaves behind a vast pool of untapped potential and resilience. It’s time we shift our conversations and focus on the informal and hybrid economies where millions of youth operate as vendors, artisans, gig workers, creatives, and small-scale entrepreneurs.
For many youth, informal economy, which accounts for over 80% of Kenya’s workforce is not just a stepping stone, it is their economy. And while informal work is often associated with low pay and uncertainty, it also holds space for creativity, resilience, and entrepreneurship.
If we continue to emphasize only formal employment as the goal, we risk overlooking the potential for youth to innovate and grow within the informal economy. It is time we formalize the informal sector.
Young people today are more connected, creative, and resourceful than ever. Many already engage in entrepreneurship out of necessity. What they need are enabling environments to turn survivalist ventures into sustainable enterprises.
Supporting youth in these sectors is about elevating dignity and amplifying agency. We must move from seeing informal work as a last resort to understanding it as a launchpad for inclusive growth. Many of the youths that I have interacted with for the last five years abandon their ventures for formal employments because they were unsustainable.
Formalize informal sector
Government (and county governments), private sector, civil society, the people and I, must rethink how we support youth, not just as future workers, but as current change makers. Collaboratively, we must establish policy frameworks that recognize and support informal sector innovation, alongside formal job creation, and push for inclusive, equitable systems that enable young people to build enterprises and create opportunities for others and not just means for self-survival.
How? Formalize informal sectors with incentives rather than fines, provide legal recognition and protections to home-based or rural enterprises, and provide tax incentives and subsidies for micro-enterprises and start-ups, especially those at survival stage, and those transitioning from survivalist to growth phases.
The youth can no longer wait for the future. The future is here and they are already building it from ground up. For most of them, they need more than jobs. They need ecosystems that support innovation, collaboration, and sustainable enterprise.
Amos Burkeywo is the Executive Director, TraLead Centre, centre for transformational leadership. Email: amosburkeywo@gmail.com
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