SAM’S SENSE: School, done! Jobs...?

It is the aspiration of every parent that their young ones would grow to become the best of their potential. Many of them strive to provide for their children, teaching them about life and helping them cross the bridges that appear shaky or too long.

And as they grow, it is the dream of every young person that their future will be one of happiness, of offering solutions instead of being part of the problem, a life of building a legacy. That’s what a perfect world looks like.

When one is grown, the benefit of hindsight offers a unique opportunity to reflect on a journey or journeys of others.

Tonight, I am moved by the young of this nation that have devoted their time, their energies and their power to dream to hard work. I think of the many motivational speeches they have received from their seniors, as they are promised of the fortunes ahead of them should they keep the discipline, consistency and most importantly, should they put their minds to their education.

I think of the 18 million Kenyans that are in the country’s education system. From the young boy and the young girl who just joined Playgroup, or is it baby class; all the way to those hoping to graduate from universities this year.

They have done their part. But what are they getting out to?

You see, the Kenya Population Census of 2019 noted that 1.3 million Kenyans were jobless, majority of them the youth. Different sources put the youth unemployment at over 13 per cent. They may sound like just numbers or complicated statistics that we sometimes like to brush off. It is not until you come face to face with unemployment.

This week I had a candid conversation with stakeholders in the health sector. We reflected on the more than 46,000 health professionals who are either underemployed or unemployed. We spoke of the more than 4,000 doctors including dentists and pharmacists who have no work to do. It was heart-breaking for Donald Ngalula to submit that he has since hang his lab coat after looking for work as a degree nurse became untenable.

Today, the cost of funding higher education has taken a different trajectory. Government is reducing its contribution to financing education at universities. The burden is shifting to the students in the loans they will accumulate. Dr. Bethwel Libeya, the pharmacist who has not found any work for three years now, told me how his classmates whose parents invested Ksh.2.3 million since they were self sponsored are yet to find work to practice what they learnt.

Luckily, Dr. Libeya and Ngalula the nurse are not idle. Dr. Libeya is into digital marketing, as he waits for the day he will be reunited with his first love, Pharmacy. Ngalula is into short term consulting contracts.

These two represent the millions of young people who still struggle to match their skills with the industry needs. We have a country that is struggling to find solutions. I note the effort by the government to invest in the affordable housing programme, to create at least 1 million jobs every year as the President says – in the construction sector. This I must say is an opportunity for some of the skilled and many of the semi-skilled or unskilled. But, what of my two friends, Libeya the pharmacist or Ngalula the nurse, or Josephine the Communication and Public Relations graduate.

If you visit a bread making factory, you are likely to see stations where the input supplies are procured, then a station where the ingredients are mixed based on predetermined portions, the baking, the cooling, then packaging. But it doesn’t end there; it extends to the market: The distribution, the sale and eventually at the breakfast table of a happy family.

We are doing well in baking the bread that is labour force. We even have 100 per cent transition from primary to secondary schools as a policy. Currently, an estimated 500,000 students are in various academic years at universities. Another half a million are at TVET institutions and colleges. Where will they go? Who is thinking about them? What are we doing about it?