Initiative On Youth Healthy But Not Enough. Check it out:
(The Nation (Kenya) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Two events with profound national implications concerning Kenya's youth have been in the news recently.
One of them was articulated by the permanent secretary in the Youth Affairs ministry, Mr Kinuthia Murugu, who assured both youth and other Kenyans that the Sh1 billion allocated in the budget for this group's Enterprise Fund would be available by November.
Then, a global forum meant to address similar endeavours took place here in Nairobi the whole of last week. The import of these two initiatives cannot be lost on anyone.
Kenya's youth constitute about 60 per cent of the population. According to recent counts, the young adults in this age-set who do not have meaningful jobs is over six million. In this group are those have completed high school, vocational institutions, and university.
A good number have been forced to resort to, among other things, hawking or working as matatu touts. These two trades are the most buffeted by complements of vicious authorities even though they contribute significantly to the nation's GDP.
The furious battles, threats, strikes and so on that result stem from the short-sighted policies that the Government has endlessly pursued, knowing full well that none would resolve the problems.
The point here is that there are few nations in the world that allow their most energetic, able-bodied, highly-educated and potentially productive age-group to atrophy even as their elders share amongst themselves what has euphemistically come to be known as the "national cake".
This absurdity is what brings about major problems. Kenya's soaring crime levels are a good example. So are the rowdiness, hooliganism and disrespect for law and authority that is all too evident in society today.
That is why initiatives such as the Enterprise Fund can be a godsend. Sh1 billion may not be big potatoes for such a huge group, but it is a good beginning - unless, of course, the omnipresent politics pokes its nose into the affair and messes up everything.
Managed well, and being sustained incrementally, the Fund should start alleviating this high level of unproductivity among youth.
For instance, most members of the 1830 age-group are technosavvy. They converse with computers, the Internet and related activities in ways that befuddle the older age-group.
It only requires conscious will by the authorities to harness these young people in new areas such as out-sourcing, computer programming and software development to make Kenya a rival to India in these matters. It can be done.
Acutely troubling question
When US Senator Barrack Obama addressed University of Nairobi students three weeks ago, he posed the acutely troubling question: if Kenya was at par with South Korea economically in the 1960s, why is this Asian country now 40 times ahead of Kenya?
What he did not need to say was that South Korea moved, not only to educate its youth, but to create avenues for them to build computers, television sets, home appliances, ships, steel products and a vast array of products with which it littered the entire world. All this it did with hardly any comparable resources such as Kenya has always had.
We have always had enormous tea, coffee and other agro-based produce; one of the world's most bountiful tourism product, and a good industrial base. South Korea, on the other hand, according to the US State Department's Country Handbook, is a mountainous and almost barren country whose main economic activity used to be growing rice. It is said the country produced more Beri Beri disease victims than rice.
It is not difficult for insightful leaders to see that it is worthwhile to ensure their offspring and their age-mates are economically productive.
If they did, Kenya would be on its way to catching up with South Korea and other countries in the developed West.
The entrepreneurial spirit in Kenya is high, and it is shameful when almost 60 per cent of the population is forced to live below the poverty line.
If the Government stopped considering how to enlarge the bottomless purses of so many unproductive entities such as MPs, commissions of inquiry and such-like and used these amounts to cater for the welfare of this largely idle age-group, it would see, in short order, an economy galloping at the rate of China's.
Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media. (allafrica.com)
Copyright 2006 The Nation (Kenya). Distributed by Allafrica Global Media.
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