deepening democracy programme · 3.1.1 cause 1: mismatch between population growth and economic...

Youth Unemployment and Exclusion in Kenya

Review of Select Counties in the Lake Region Economic Bloc

April 2019

DEEPENING DEMOCRACY PROGRAMME


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Abbreviations .................................................................................................................................. ivExecutive Summary ........................................................................................................................ v

Lessons and Conclusions ........................................................................................................... vRecommendations ...................................................................................................................... v

Recommendations for National GovernmentRecommendations for County GovernmentsRecommendations for the Private Sector Recommendations for Donors and NGOs

1.0 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 1Research Methods ...................................................................................................................... 2

2.0 Analytical Framework: Unemployment and Exclusion Causes and Policy Responses ... 42.1 Definitions ............................................................................................................................. 52.2 Causes of Youth Unemployment and Exclusion ................................................................... 52.3 Policy Solutions to Youth Unemployment and Exclusion ...................................................... 6

3.0 The Kenyan Context .................................................................................................................. 73.1 Causes of youth unemployment and exclusion in the Kenyan context ................................. 8

3.1.1 Cause 1: Mismatch between population growth and economic growth3.1.2 Cause 2: Mismatch between available skills and skills in demand3.1.3 Cause 3: Education does not prepare young people for job opportunities3.1.4 Cause 4: Young people are excluded from important social and economic processes3.1.5 Youth unemployment and exclusion in the Lake Region Economic Bloc

3.2 Devolution in the Kenyan Context ....................................................................................... 103.2.1 Youth within devolved structures 3.2.2 “Youth” is not a devolved function

4.0 Policy Responses to Youth Unemployment and Exclusion in Kenya ............................... 124.1 The National Policy Context ................................................................................................ 13

4.1.1 National Youth Employment Policies4.2 Addressing the Causes of Unemployment and Exclusion .................................................. 13

4.2.1 Addressing the mismatch between demographic growth and economic growth4.2.2 Addressing the mismatch between skills and labour market requirements4.2.3 Addressing the imbalance between demand for education and job opportunities4.2.4 Addressing Youth Exclusion

4.3 Regional Policy Responses – The Lake Region Economic Bloc Policy Framework .......... 144.4 The County Policy Framework: Focus on the six selected counties .................................. 15

4.4.1 Budget Allocations to “Youth Affairs”4.4.2 Youth Policies4.4.3 Employment Policies4.4.4 Addressing Youth Inclusion Issues

4.5 Successes and Failures in Addressing Youth Unemployment and Exclusion ................... 174.5.1 Addressing the mismatch between population and job growth4.5.2 Addressing the mismatch between education and labour market demands4.5.3 Addressing the imbalance between demand for education and job opportunities4.5.4 Addressing youth exclusion and involving youth in governance

Case study 1: Kakamega County’s employment creation efforts ........................................... 20Background .............................................................................................................................. 20What causes are being addressed?.......................................................................................... 20How are the Youth Service Act and other policies implemented? ............................................ 20What are some successes? ..................................................................................................... 20

Table of Contents


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Where have there been failures? .............................................................................................. 20Case study 2: What has been achieved in vocational training provision in Kisii county? ... 21

Background ............................................................................................................................... 21Which cause is being addressed? ............................................................................................ 21How have the relevant policies been implemented in Kisii? ..................................................... 21What are some of the successes and failures? ........................................................................ 21What are the recommendations? .............................................................................................. 22

Case study 3: Access to Government Procurement Opportunities ........................................ 23Background ............................................................................................................................... 23There have been some successes ........................................................................................... 23Young people’s frustrations with AGPO mainly relate to access to finance ............................. 23Lessons learned ........................................................................................................................ 23

5.0 Lessons from Other Countries .............................................................................................. 245.1 What works in youth employment policies: evidence from the international context .......... 25

5.1.1 Addressing Cause 1: mismatch between population growth and economic growth5.1.2 Addressing Cause 2: mismatch between available skills and skills in demand5.1.3 Addressing Cause 3: education does not prepare young people for job opportunities

5.2 Lessons for labour market policies and delivery in devolved contexts ............................... 276.0 Lessons and Conclusions ...................................................................................................... 29

Lessons from other countries7.0 Policy Recommendations ....................................................................................................... 32

Recommendations .................................................................................................................... 33Recommendations for National GovernmentRecommendations for County GovernmentsRecommendations for the Private Sector Recommendations for Donors and NGOs

ANNEXESMethodology ................................................................................................................................... 36

Aims of the Research ............................................................................................................... 36Priorities for the Research ....................................................................................................... 36Research Methods .................................................................................................................... 36

Literature ReviewSamplingData collectionData AnalysisReport writing

Limitations of the research ........................................................................................................ 37Validation of findings ................................................................................................................. 38

References ...................................................................................................................................... 39List of Interviewees ....................................................................................................................... 43

Busia County 28 – 30 November 2018 ................................................................................. 43Kakamega 3 – 4 November 2018 .......................................................................................... 43Kisii County 23 – 27 November 2018 ................................................................................... 44Kisumu County 20 – 22 November 2018 ............................................................................. 44Nandi County 21 – 22 November 2018 ................................................................................. 45Siaya County 27 – 28 November 2018 ................................................................................. 45

ABBREVIATIONS


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ADP Annual Development Plan

AFIDEP African Institute for Development Policy

AGPO Access to Government Procurement Opportunities

BC British Council

CBET Competency Based Education and Training

CEC County Executive Committee

CIDP County Integrated Development Plan

CSA Centre for the Study of Adolescence

DDP Deepening Democracy Programme

EPWP Expanded Public Works Programme

ETI Employment Tax Incentive

FGD Focus Group Discussion

FY Financial Year

GBP British Pounds

GDP Gross Domestic Product

IBP International Budget Partnership

ICT Information and Communication Technology

IEA Institute of Economic Affairs

ILO International Labour Organisation

KAM Kenya Association of Manufacturers

KEPSA Kenya Private Sector Alliance

KNBS Kenya National Bureau of Statistics

KNQF Kenya National Qualification Framework

KYEOP Kenya Youth Economic Opportunity Programme

KNPA Kenya Young Parliamentarians Association

LREB Lake Region Economic Bloc

MCA Member of County Assembly

MoALF Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries

MTEF Medium Term Expenditure Framework

MTP Medium Term Plan

NITA National Industrial Training Authority

NYP National Youth Policy

ODI Overseas Development Institute

OECD Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development

PES Public Employment Service

PPARB Public Procurement Administrative Review Board

AbbreviationsPWDs People with Disabilities

TOR Terms of Reference

TVET Technical and Vocational Education and Training

TVETA Technical and Vocational Education and Training Authority

UNDP United Nations Development Programme

UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific, Cultural Organisation

VTC Vocational Training Centre

VSO Voluntary Services Overseas

YEDF Youth Enterprise Development Fund

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY


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Executive Summary Kenya faces a formidable challenge if it is to turn its large, currently unemployed youth population into a demographic dividend. The youth unemployment rate has remained at 26% in recent years, despite respectable economic growth rates since 2010 (World Bank, 2018).

This report reviews policies and programmes that address the youth unemployment and exclusion challenge at national and at county level, to see what works and what does not. It also identifies lessons from other countries with comparable youth and economic profiles and similar devolved structures. Given the large number of counties, these issues were explored through a closer look at six counties (Busia, Kakamega, Kisii, Kisumu, Nandi, Siaya) in the Lake Region Economic Bloc (LREB).

More specifically, this report aims to address the following three research questions:

1. Which policies and political structures exist at the county level to address youth employment and inclusion issues?

2. How well have these been implemented and what successes/failures have they registered (in terms of youth inclusion and participation, employment creation, encouraging self-employment)? How has the interplay between national/federal policies and county/state policies affected youth policies?

3. What lessons can Kenya learn from the experiences of other countries? What can other countries learn from the Kenyan experience? What can counties in Kenya - in the LREB and more broadly - learn from the case studies?

The study found four causes of youth unemployment. First, the Kenyan economy is unable to absorb the number of young people who seek to enter the labour market every year. Second, young men and women lack the appropriate technical and soft skills sought by employers or for successful self-employment. Third, education quality does not appropriately tackle the skills shortage especially as required in the formal sector. Finally, young people are excluded from employment opportunities due to their lack of work experience, social networks or discriminatory employment practices such as nepotism, poverty (too poor to bribe for a job) or gender biases.

Lessons and ConclusionsThere are clear lessons emerging from the research. To begin with, there is a very large discrepancy between the scale of the youth unemployment challenge and the efforts being made to address it through County Governments. The policies and programmes initiated both at the National and County level – the focus of this report – are inadequate considering the magnitude of the challenge.

Undoubtedly, the most important cause of youth unemployment in Kenya is the mismatch between demographic growth and available job opportunities. Counties are not able to address the challenge of youth unemployment for a number of reasons including: the lack of clarity around which entity is primarily responsible for youth – national or county government. Linked to this is the availability of resources to address this problem at county level. “Youth employment” and “youth inclusion” are not, strictly speaking, functions, nor have their constituent parts been devolved in a way that would facilitate county government interventions. Only one particular dimension of youth employment – vocational training – has been clearly defined and devolved.

County Integrated Development Plans (CIDPs) appear to be a missed opportunity to put forward a more comprehensive approach to youth employment and inclusion with most providing a list of interventions and programmes that might have some impact on youth employment but for which there was insufficient funding. That said, in situations where the leadership was particularly committed to assisting youth to find employment, CIDPs proved a more effective tool than in other counties.

A lack of reliable, timely and relevant data to inform development of effective youth policies makes policymaking and programming especially difficult. Youth specific data would provide useful insights as would county-specific data on labour market demands that could inform tailor-making of training courses at vocational training centres (VTCs). Likewise, the Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (AGPO) initiative suffers from the lack of validated, timely data as counties are unable to ascertain what the effect of AGPO has been and whether it is achieving its objective.

RecommendationsThe recommendations for this study are made to National Government, County Government, Private Sector, and Development Partners/Donors, as follows:

Recommendations for National Government

• Commit to finalising the National Youth Policy, which should clearly devolve responsibility for implementing youth policies and programmes to counties within an overall strategic framework and commit to facilitating inter-county learning about what works to stimulate youth employment.

• Ensure that national job creation efforts and county level efforts where policies are implemented are harmonised for improving youth employment. In engagements with the private sector (directly and through the membership associations such as the Kenya Association

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY


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of Manufacturers (KAM), the Kenya Private Sector alliance (KEPSA) and others), ensure that any policies implemented are intentional about job creation for young people directly or through internships that enable experience building to prepare them for the next job.

• Ensure that national efforts take the diversity of youth into account. As youth are not a homogenous group, they will require different policies and interventions, based on skill levels and aspirations.

• Ensure that the school curriculum provides adequate civic education for children, so that they understand the purpose and benefits of participating in policymaking.

• Clarify the roles and create effective platforms for coordination and engagement between the Ministry for Youth Affairs and the Directorate for Youth.

• Commit to making AGPO truly inclusive by reducing the burden of paperwork for young people and creating monitoring mechanisms that increase the transparency of tender awards.

Recommendations for County Governments

• Advocate for the finalisation of the National Youth Policy.

• Develop county specific policies to address youth employment based on the economy, growth sectors and job creation prospects. This should include developing policies to create an enabling environment that encourages investment by the private sector in the county, with the aim of promoting employment creation.

• Establish effective youth representation schemes to facilitate youth inclusion and opportunities to better understand youth employment challenges, building on the successes of Kakamega and Nandi Counties.

• Generate detailed and disaggregated data to inform decision-making on youth employment taking into account the diversity of young men and women in terms of gender, ability and aspirations to inform policy making.

• Set up county level working groups to convene and coordinate key stakeholders, particularly the private sector, VTCs, county government, youth representatives and AGPO programme officials. These would:

a. determine labour market demand for different skill sets in each county;

b. encourage the private sector to play an active role in training unemployed youth;

c. agree the priority areas for external (national government and donor) support to different activities, including piloting innovative employment generation programmes and evaluating their effectiveness.

• Improve civic education for youth so that they understand the purpose of participation and their role in policymaking. Likewise, older citizens should be encouraged to view young people as active participants in society, as having a positive contribution to make – and set aside the lingering attitude that ‘young people should be seen and not heard’.

• Create mechanisms for sharing learning between county-level working groups.

• Strengthen the leadership of VTCs and ensure their participation in the development of county-level strategy and planning on labour market issues to ensure their responsiveness in how they train youth for employment.

• Focus on providing training centres with quality staff and equipment, rather than building further training centres.

• Collaborate across counties to establish training courses or centres that specialise in the “blue” economy and provide training in fisheries and marine trades.

• Improve accountability mechanisms in the AGPO programme to ensure that only bona fide youth (and other marginalised groups’) businesses benefit. Provide training to individual youth and youth groups on AGPO processes to facilitate their participation.

Recommendations for the Private Sector

• Create training opportunities, take risks with less experienced employees, and provide mentoring opportunities.

• Create job matching, training, and advice initiatives that will enable young people to find jobs as well as aid the private sector to find qualified youth.

Recommendations for Donors and NGOs

• Ensure that job creation for young people is at the heart of sector and macroeconomic policy advice and programming, support national and county governments to develop mainstreaming frameworks for youth intervention programmes.

• Advocate for access to decent work through campaigns to address low wages, poor working conditions, and safety, which disproportionately affect young people.

• Build the capacity of county governments to generate and analyse labour market data. Until counties have sufficient capacity to generate and analyse relevant, local data, donors should assist counties with this. The first priority should be to conduct analyses on which economic sectors have the most potential to generate not just income but additional jobs.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY


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• Support evidence-based design and implementation of youth employment programmes, monitor progress and share accurate information for learning and strategy development processes.

• Support the development of working groups within and across LREB counties, including inter-county exchanges to share knowledge about the efficacy of different youth employment schemes.

• Collaborate with vocational training providers to develop new training courses that are relevant to county-level and national youth strategies.

• Pilot and test innovative forms of training for young entrepreneurs so they can benefit from the AGPO programme.

• Provide training to youth representatives in County Assemblies to improve oversight of and lobbying on youth issues.

INTRODUCTION

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INTRODUCTION


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Kenya faces a formidable challenge if it is to turn its large, currently underemployed youth population into a demographic dividend. The stubbornly high youth unemployment rate has not shifted significantly from 26% in recent years (World Bank, 2018), despite respectable economic growth rates since the economy bounced back from political instability in 2007/2008. The high youth unemployment rate is due to three imbalances. The first is a mismatch between population and economic growth. High birth rates mean that many more young Kenyans enter the labour market each year than jobs are created (ibid.). The second is a mismatch between available skills and demand for them, i.e. young people do not have the levels of education needed to make the most of available opportunities. The third is that the available education does not prepare young people for the labour market because curricula are outdated, not relevant for self-employment or otherwise irrelevant (British Council, 2017).

Kenya has also embarked on one of the most ambitious devolution processes in Africa, if not the world, in recent years. Devolution came into effect shortly after the general election of 2013, when 47 county government entities – counties – were created complete with their newly-elected governors and County Assembly Members. Devolution was expected to solve a number of problems, including poor governance and unaccountable government. Particularly relevant to this report was the expectation that devolution would put an end to the exclusion of marginalised groups, including young people.

Theoretically, the proximity of devolved government entities to their citizens should make them better suited to addressing the needs of excluded groups, including youth and people living with disabilities (Otieno et al., 2014; Cheeseman, 2014). This report looks at the policies and programmes that address the youth unemployment and exclusion challenge at the county level, to see what works and what does not at the county government level. It also identifies lessons from other countries with similar youth and economic profiles. The overarching aim is to determine what works and what does not at the county level, and to see where lessons can be learned from countries with similar youth and economic profiles.

To do so, we sought to identify successful approaches to policymaking, as well as successful implementation of policies at the county level. Given the large number of counties in Kenya, these issues were explored through a closer look at six counties in the Lake Region Economic Bloc (LREB), where youth unemployment has made itself felt. We also looked at the role of the LREB as counties sought to address their youth inclusion challenges.

More specifically, this report aims to address the following three research questions:

• Which policies and political structures exist at the county level to address youth employment and inclusion issues?

• What successes/failures have they registered (in terms of youth inclusion and participation, employment creation, encouraging self-employment)? How has the interplay

between national/federal policies and county/state policies affected youth policies?

• What lessons can Kenya learn from the experiences of other countries? What can other counties in Kenya learn from the case studies? What can other countries learn from the Kenyan experience?

Research MethodsThe research for this report began with an extensive desk review of the work that has been conducted in the field of youth employment and inclusion through county government initiatives, in Kenya and internationally. The aim of the review was to draw out key lessons domestically and internationally and ensure that the work adds new insights to existing knowledge.

Six counties were selected from the 14 that make up the LREB. These six made up the purposive sample so as to get a wide range of county experiences. The dimensions considered included economic criteria, ethnic composition, whether the leadership had expressed interest in including marginalised groups, unemployment levels, and political affiliation. The LREB was chosen as the focus of our research as its experiences of youth exclusion are representative of the rest of the country and the regional bloc has a focus on youth employment and inclusion. The research team made up of Alexandra Löwe, Susan Njambi-Szlapka, Raphael Obonyo, and Sonia Rasugu visited the six chosen counties to interview County Executives, Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF) Officers, Members of County Assemblies (MCAs), and representatives of civil society on their experiences of trying to further the youth inclusion agenda. Where available, relevant policy documents (CIDPs, social protection policies, the LREB Blueprint etc.) were reviewed.

The data collected in the course of the fieldwork was then analysed, with the research questions in mind. Data from interviews was written up and coded, before the review stage. This allowed the research team to elaborate the main themes and conclusions of the research and to decide which three case studies to choose. Initially, the intention

INTRODUCTION


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was to choose county case studies according to their successes and failures in domesticating and implementing the National Youth Policy. However, given that the National Youth Policy is still in draft form and many counties are waiting for national government to provide direction (through an updated Youth Policy), the research team chose to focus on other aspects. Consequently, the case studies cover the following subjects: the experience of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) provision in Kisii, the Government’s Youth Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (YAGPO) initiatives and the case of Kakamega, which has made the most progress on youth employment and inclusion.

A validation meeting was held in Kisumu on 15th of March 2019, which included representatives of the various stakeholder groups including youth, county officials, elected/nominated MCAs, and national government officials working in youth affairs. The research team presented the main findings and recommendations. A combination of group work, plenary discussion, and the use of a substantiation questionnaire ensured that views from all participants were heard. An analysis of the responses showed that participants concurred with the findings, conclusions and recommendations of the report.

The methodology chosen had a number of limitations:

• The sampling was purposive to capture as many experiences as possible across the LREB and to extract the most important lessons on the intersection between devolution, youth inclusion and employment. However, this also means that this research was not necessarily representative of the whole country.

• Unfortunately, at the time of writing, there was very little systematic evaluation or even written information available on the youth programmes and initiatives conducted by county governments. This meant that the research focused on the structures that have been put in place following devolution, rather than the programmes. The report, therefore, does not provide any guidance on which initiatives are promising for creating jobs or encouraging self-employment.

• Given timeframes, only a limited number of young people were interviewed on their experiences. That said, efforts were made to speak to a diverse range of young people.

For more details on the research methods and process, please see Annex 1. For of list of those interviewed in the course of this research, please see Annex 3.

ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK: UNEMPLOYMENT AND

EXCLUSION CAUSES AND POLICY RESPONSES

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ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORKUNEMPLOYMENT AND EXCLUSION CAUSES AND POLICY RESPONSES

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Youth unemployment and exclusion are complex issues, on which there has been a lot of research over the years. In this section, the analytical framework is set out, including key definitions and the key causes for youth unemployment and exclusion, including relevant hypotheses, on the basis of which our data has been analysed.

2.1 Definitions For the sake of this piece of research, ILO definitions of employment and self-employment are used. Accordingly, unemployment is understood to encompass:

All persons of working age who were a) without work during the reference period, i.e. not in paid employment or self-employment; b) available for work, i.e. were available for paid employment or self-employment during the reference period; and c) seeking work, i.e. had taken specific steps in a specified recent period to seek paid employment or self-employment. ILO, 2013

In keeping with ILO definitions, this also includes those people who are of working age and are in skills training or retraining schemes within employment promotion programmes (ibid). In addition to those who are strictly unemployed, we also include the underemployed when referring to unemployment. The ILO defines the underemployed as people who are either willing and available to work longer hours or who want to find work that better uses their skills during their working hours (ibid.). When talking about youth unemployment in the Kenyan context, it makes sense to combine these two categories under the umbrella term of “unemployed” given that many young people in Kenya have failed to find full-time work or work that uses their skills, and so they must still earn their living in ill-suited jobs, part-time employment, or unproductive self-employment. They are subject to many of the same constraints as their unemployed peers and would benefit from the same employment policies. Of course, the ultimate aim of any employment policy should not just be that all young Kenyans are gainfully employed, but that they have access to the professional opportunities that would allow them to fulfil their potential and aspirations. However, given the current situation in Kenya, this report focuses on narrower definitions of employment.

“Youth inclusion” is defined as the ability of the younger generation (in the Kenyan context those aged 18 to 35) to be active participants in political and policy processes and in the decisions that affect their lives. While such a definition includes their participation in aspects that go far beyond youth employment challenges, the policy analysis focused on their participation in youth employment policy processes and decisions.

2.2 Causes of Youth Unemployment and ExclusionThe causes of unemployment, as defined above, fall into four broad categories. The first comes about when there is a mismatch between population growth and economic growth. This happens when populations grow faster than the economy or when economic growth does not generate enough jobs to employ the growing population (Ndayambaje et al., 2016)

The second cause of unemployment occurs when the skills held by the working population do not meet the requirements of the labour market or where the working population does not have the skills necessary to make the most of self-employment opportunities available within a given economic structure (ibid.). This can happen either when populations are overqualified for the work available or where populations are under-qualified for available opportunities. It is possible for both to exist concurrently in the same labour market.

The third cause of unemployment is similar to the second – i.e. the working population does not have the necessary skills – but this is the result of poor-quality educational institutions, rather than the workforce having too much or too little education. This can also lead to a mismatch between the expectations of employment held by young people who have attended higher education, for example, but find that they still cannot find an “office job”.

Given the focus on county level approaches, this report discusses population-economic growth mismatch primarily in the literature review and national policy analysis. The focus in subsequent sections is on the skills-market mismatch and education-job opportunities mismatch.

A fourth, albeit structural, cause falls under the category of youth exclusion. Although its causes do not arise so much from economic structures or education, it is in itself a cause of youth unemployment, arising from society’s perceptions of young people. The first association is the perception of young people as less competent to make decisions of consequence. The second is linked to the absence of structures targeted at increasing participation of young people, who need to be engaged in particular ways. And the third is that young people are excluded due to some of the characteristics of youth, i.e. they have access to fewer resources, are less experienced at participating in political processes, often lack confidence, and may have internalised negative perceptions of youth.


ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORKUNEMPLOYMENT AND EXCLUSION CAUSES AND POLICY RESPONSES

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2.3 Policy Solutions to Youth Unemployment and ExclusionThere are a number of policy options available to governments to address the above causes of youth unemployment. The population-economic growth mismatch requires the creation of more jobs, a reduction in the population, or both. Population and macroeconomic policies are outside of the remit of this report, but there are sectoral development policies that can encourage job creation, such as stimulating growth and investment in sectors that will create more jobs. This may, for example, include policies that increase investments in labour-intensive agricultural production (Betcherman and Khan, 2015; Kluve et al. 2017; O’Higgins and Moscariello, 2017).

The skills-market mismatch and skills deficit can be addressed through active labour market policies (preferably involving the private sector to ensure its skills requirements are met), increasing employability and by encouraging self-employment and entrepreneurship. Examples of active labour market policies are training and skills development as well as subsidised employment (Kluve et al. 2017). Increasing the employability of the labour force involves improving the quality of and access to formal education and creating alternative pathways to learning (Rankin et al, 2015). Youth entrepreneurship and self-employment includes access to finance, business support and formalisation as well as education specifically tailored to entrepreneurs (OECD, 2017). These policies are further elaborated in the typology table in Annex 4.

Addressing the causes of youth exclusion involves the following policies and interventions:

• The prejudices towards young people are best addressed through education programmes. Equally, giving young people the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to participate in a meaningful manner is necessary. This includes initiatives that encourage collaboration between adults and young people to foster mutual understanding. Prejudice is compounded when gender discrimination imposes additional constraints on young women, and therefore targeted efforts to engage young women in dialogue with adults are called for.

• Where structures are absent or not adequate, the creation and development of such structures that give voice to young people in the political process should be a priority. This serves both policymakers, who need to understand the realities of youth, as well as young people, provided the quality of participation is assured.

• Helping young people overcome the disadvantages of youth includes literacy training, confidence-building, life skills training and the opportunity to learn through active participation with support and mentoring.

• Creating meaningful employment for young people and societies within which they can participate as equals also means understanding their professional and personal aspirations. These are all-too-often ignored and where young people’s aspirations differ from other members of society, youth are labelled as being unrealistic or lazy.

THE KENYAN CONTEXT

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THE KENYAN CONTEXT

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3.1 Causes of youth unemployment and exclusion in the Kenyan contextSummary: the causes of unemployment in Kenya

• Population growth: more people enter the labour market than leave it

• Economic growth is not accompanied by equal growth in jobs because

a. growth is driven by non labour-intensive sectors

b. growth in job creation is stagnant

• Demand side challenges: young people lack the skills needed for work, especially in the formal sector and are less interested in labour intensive opportunities that could provide employment

• Education systems: outdated curricula fail to provide relevant skills; school drop outs

• Structural issues: corruption, marginalisation and discrimination against youth, especially young women

The origins and nature of Kenya’s youth (un)employment difficulties are well understood as originating in the mismatch between Kenya’s population dynamics and the realities of economic growth, the labour market, lack of knowledge and relevant skills among youth, and youth aspirations (AFIDEP and University of Southampton, 2018; Omolo, 2012). Broader problems of corruption, lack of capital, and limited access to finance for entrepreneurs aggravate the situation. These are outlined below, following the analytical framework described in the previous section.

3.1.1 Cause 1: mismatch between population growth and economic growth

The Kenyan economy has seen respectable Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rates since 2010, ranging from 4.5% to 8.4% p.a. (World Bank, 2018). Despite this, its labour market has been unable to absorb the youth bulge. Between 750,000 and 1 million young people attempt to enter the job market every year: greater than the number who leave it (AFIDEP and University of Southampton, 2018; British Council, 2017; Muchira, 2018). Economic growth has not translated into sufficient job growth as it has been concentrated in sectors that are not labour intensive, such as mining and extractive industries (British Council, 2017).

Of the young people who have managed to find employment, only about 15% manage to find work in the formal sector.AFIDEP and University of Southampton, 2018

Kenya has the second highest informal employment rate outside the agricultural sector after India (British Council, 2017). In the twenty-year period from 1990 to 2010,

employment increased by an average of 17.4% each year in the informal sector, compared to just 2% in the formal sector (Omolo, 2012). Between 2015 and 2016 employment in the informal sector grew by 5.9 % (KNBS, 2017). While any expansion in employment is welcome, jobs in the informal sector tend to be lower wage and with more limited legal and social protection than those in the formal sector (British Council, 2017).

For rural youth, (self-)employment is also largely informal and concentrated in the agricultural sector (British Council, 2017). Despite its importance to employment, the sector is the option of last resort for most young people. As detailed in Box 1 below, young people perceive it as risky, dirty, subject to climatic shocks, and uneconomical (Irungu et al, 2015; Ramisch 2015; Awiti and Scott 2016). After agriculture, the informal service sector provides most opportunities for young people, principally in catering, trade, transport, waste management in urban areas and tourism (British Council, 2017; Odhiambo et al., 2015).

There are high hopes for growth in information and communication technologies (ICT) and a digital revolution to create jobs – in Kenya’s “Silicon Savannah”. Though ICTs are important to the economy as a whole, a youth-focused analysis of employment prospects in the sector does not suggest that it will create enough jobs to address the youth employment challenge (British Council, 2017).

Box 1: Challenges to youth employment in agriculture

There are good reasons why Kenya’s youth are – by and large – not interested in the agriculture sector. Much of the sector is unproductive and young people are generally disadvantaged with regards to:

• Land: scarcity and increased life expectancy means young people inherit smaller plots of land, later in life. Land purchases remain an option, but few young people have the financial means to buy.

• Capital: lack of capital means young farmers cannot afford inputs (such as seeds, fertilisers).

• Financial services: youth struggle to access financial services, such as insurance or credit, as they lack collateral and are seen as risky investments by financial institutions.

• Social capital: young people are less likely to be members of farmer groups.

• Market access: youth have limited access to marketing information, poor post-harvest management and insufficient marketing skills, and weak farmer organisations.

Adapted from: Gitau and Gori, 2016; Njeru and Gichimu, 2014; MoALF, 2017


THE KENYAN CONTEXT

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3.1.2 Cause 2: mismatch between available skills and skills in demand

Aggravating the shortage of jobs, is the fact that young Kenyans do not have the skills for self-employment or those sought by employers. Some of the reasons for this include:

• Tertiary enrolment rates are comparatively low: only 3.3% of women and 4.7% of men enroll in these institutions, compared to 6% in sub-Saharan Africa and 26% globally. Of unemployed Kenyans, 92% had no vocational or professional training, and less than 5% had tertiary education (British Council, 2017).

• Government’s focus on universal primary (and secondary) access: focus has been on the universal coverage of primary and secondary education at the expense of investments in tertiary education. However, this has changed recently with a government focus on developing local talent to find solutions to local problems (British Council, 2018).

• Barriers to access: high university fees and stringent entry requirements create insurmountable barriers to higher education for many youth (British Council, 2017). Nevertheless, between 2003 and 2015, there was a 400% increase in enrolment at Kenyan universities driven, in part, by the introduction of “parallel” degree programmes1 and expansion of university education (British Council, 2017).

3.1.3 Cause 3: education does not prepare young people for job opportunities

Many of Kenya’s educational institutions do not prepare young people for the available opportunities. Many of those who do invest in their education find themselves without productive work (British Council, 2017). The causes of this are as follows:

• Low quality education: a proliferation of higher education institutions, coupled with funding shortages, means that many institutions provide poor quality education. At the tertiary level there has been a reduction in funding: student numbers rose by 28% between 2014–15 and 2015–16, while funding fell by 6% (British Council, 2017).

• Curricula do not address labour market skills shortages: The curricula for TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) institutions focus on theoretical knowledge rather than practical skills. TVET graduates often require extra training to transfer their skills to the workplace. TVET curricula are also often outdated, facilities or equipment are inadequate, and quality assurance mechanisms are poor (Ngure, 2015; British Council 2017).

• TVET institutions suffer from poor reputations. In the absence of standardised national certification schemes, employers and potential students struggle to judge the quality of the education provided (ILO 2013).

3.1.4 Cause 4: young people are excluded from important social and economic processes

Youth exclusionYouth exclusion is directly relevant to the employment situation in Kenya in several ways:

• Social networks: Young people are disproportionately affected by unemployment, as they not only lack the skills and experience to take advantage of opportunities on the job market, they also do not have the networks to access those opportunities (British Council, 2017; Sikenyi, 2017).

• Corruption, ethnic discrimination and nepotism aggravate the exclusion of young people. Where jobs are available, particularly in government, young people feel that they are unable to access them due to nepotism and ethnic discrimination. Corruption reduces the monies available for employment creation, reducing overall opportunities (Omolo, 2012).

• Poverty and vulnerability: Youth living in poor households whose members are also unemployed are disadvantaged by their lack of networks (British Council, 2017). Living in poor households also inhibits access to education. Youth often drop out of school early due to the cost of education or poor infrastructure (Nicolai et al., 2014).

• The cost of searching for work is also higher for youth in poor households, as they have to travel further to access opportunities (British Council, 2017).

Youth inclusion is important for reasons that go beyond helping young people to access economic opportunities. The Kenyan constitution as well as the draft National Youth Policy emphasise the need for youth inclusion as an end in itself. Both stress the need to create a society in which everyone, but particularly the youth, is able to realise their aspirations. The policy framework recognises that this is not only important for young people, but for society as a whole.

Youth aspirations are diverse and often deeply personal and individual. For that reason, the content of these aspirations falls outside of the scope of this report. Instead, the focus is on structures of political inclusion as these will support the creation of a society in which individuals can realise their personal aspirations.

DiscriminationYouth are not a homogenous group and so their experiences of exclusion will vary considerably. Some groups will face discrimination for reasons beyond their age; young women and youth with disabilities are particularly affected.

1. “Parallel” degree programmes are courses which are offered by public universities to privately-funded students not entering university through the state administered entry system


THE KENYAN CONTEXT

10

Female youth unemployment rates are at least 10% higher than those of their male counterparts (Zepeda et al., 2013). This is unsurprising given the very high levels of competition for jobs: women find it harder to access employment, regardless of their level of education and training.

Even where they have the same level of education as their male contemporaries, women are twice as likely to be unemployed or underemployedAFIDEP and University of Southampton, 2018

Possible reasons for this include their choice of course, pressure to get married and start a family, caregiving responsibilities, confidence levels, and access to networks, education and training. This restricts women to unskilled labour sectors with low wages (AFIDEP and University of Southampton, 2018).

Young women face discrimination at school, in the workplace, the community, and at home. The burden of domestic chores and child care affects their educational and career ambitions (British Council, 2017). They face discriminatory hiring practices, for example when employers favour hiring men over women due to perceived costs of maternity leave (World Bank, 2011) and sexual discrimination or harassment in the workplace means that they are more likely to drop out of employment altogether (British Council, 2018).

Disabled youth also face discrimination when participating in the workforce. Often they are excluded from participating in formal employment due to discriminatory hiring practices (ibid.). This leaves self-employment in the informal sector, where they also lack protection and decent working conditions.

3.1.5 Youth unemployment and exclusion in the Lake Region Economic Bloc

Unfortunately, there is no reliable data on the scale of the youth unemployment issue in the LREB. However, it is safe to assume that levels are not significantly lower or higher than elsewhere in the country which stands at approximately 25% (Deloitte, 2014). As we will see below, this absence of data is one of the key factors holding back counties in the region and, presumably, in other parts of Kenya.

3.2 Devolution in the Kenyan ContextFollowing the adoption of the new constitution in 2010, Kenya embarked on one of the most ambitious devolution processes in Africa, if not globally. This created 47 new county government entities (counties) and subsumed prior systems of administration (Nyikuri et al., 2017).

The aim of devolution was to resolve long-standing issues of poor governance by creating a more inclusive state, with accountable institutions that provided equitable and responsive services that are closer to citizens (Otieno, 2014). In theory, the proximity of devolved government to citizens should make it better suited to addressing their needs,

including those of excluded groups, youth and people living with disabilities (Otieno, 2014; Cheeseman, 2014).

Beyond this, devolution was seen as an opportunity to reduce inequalities between different parts of the country, in terms of economic growth and service provision World Bank, 2012

Devolution entailed risks, particularly as the reorganisation of county government was combined with the transfer of greater responsibilities, powers and resources. The World Bank noted that, in the absence of adequate structures, procedures and human resources, regional inequalities could be exacerbated as some counties may be able to attract greater levels of investment or levy more taxes (World Bank, 2012) and bloated local administrations could swallow an ever-increasing share of devolved resources, resulting in the potential collapse of service delivery in less affluent counties (Otieno, 2014). Newly-established counties may also lack the capacity to fulfil their growing responsibilities (World Bank, 2015; Otieno, 2014).

3.2.1 Youth within devolved structures

A minimum of fifteen percent of the national budget is allocated to counties. Each county receives an equitable share based on population size, land area, historical fiscal responsibility and its poverty index. Counties may levy taxes and receive funds from aid organisations or donors but can only borrow with a guarantee from national government (Constitution of Kenya, 2010). Because youth is not a constitutional ‘function’ there is no direct impetus to ensure that this budget is allocated to youth-focused policies and programmes.

Each county government consists of an Executive and Assembly. The Executive is led by a directly elected governor who is responsible for coordinating the work of its departments. S/he is supported by up to ten County Executive Committee members who are nominated to oversee the implementation of devolved functions. Below the county level there are sub-counties, wards, and villages to which services should be decentralised where efficient (Muriu and Nizam, 2014). County Executives and County Assemblies are required to include youth representatives to represent the county’s young people, along with elected and nominated members (MCAs), an elected Speaker, Majority Leader, Minority Leader and a Clerk. The County Assembly legislates around its devolved functions, overseeing the County Executive Committee and other County Executive organs (Constitution of Kenya, 2010).

Together, the Assembly and Executive deliver the functions outlined in the fourth schedule of the Kenyan constitution (Constitution of Kenya, 2010). Those most relevant to young people are economic activities (trade, agriculture, transport), education and cultural activities, and health services. For education, counties are responsible for pre-primary


THE KENYAN CONTEXT

11

education and vocational training: the national government is responsible for primary and secondary education.

3.2.2 “Youth” is not a devolved function

While youth is explicitly considered in the devolved structures, it is not a “function” according to the Fourth Schedule of Kenya’s constitution. It is, therefore, not a “devolved function” in the same way that health, local roads or pre-primary schooling are. However, young people (defined as persons aged 18 to 35) are listed as a vulnerable group in the Constitution and, as such, all state organs and public officers have a duty to ensure that their needs are addressed. According to the constitution, the state:

Shall take measures, including affirmative action programmes, to ensure that the youth (a) access relevant education and training; (b) have opportunities to associate, be represented and participate in political, social, economic and other spheres of life; (c) access employment; and (d) are protected from harmful cultural practices and exploitation.Constitution of Kenya, 2010

Provisions are made in the Constitution for young people to participate at county government level: most importantly, representatives must be nominated or elected to the County Assemblies. A number of counties have also chosen to ensure youth representation on other bodies such as the County Public Service Board. Some have further demonstrated the importance of youth issues by making one Executive Committee Member responsible for youth affairs (Okute 2014). Theoretically, devolution allows for direct youth participation in the political processes through public scrutiny processes, for example when annual plans and budgets are publicly reviewed (ibid.).

A number of informal mechanisms give young people a voice at county and national level (Ismail, 2017; Hope, 2012). They can participate, for example, in developing the County Fiscal Strategy Paper which outlines how different sectors in the country government will share resources (Centre for the Study of Adolescence, 2018). Youth participation is also enhanced through mechanisms provided by non-governmental organisations such as the youth ‘bunge’ structure (Ismail, 2017) and Youth Senate (British Council, 2017).

POLICY RESPONSES TO YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT

AND EXCLUSION IN KENYA

4

POLICY RESPONSES TO YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT AND EXCLUSION IN KENYA


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4.1 The National Policy ContextThe county policy context is influenced by the national youth employment and inclusion framework. This is outlined in this section, while county-level policies are discussed in the next section.

4.1.1 National Youth Employment Policies

National government addresses youth employment and inclusion through many policies and programmes, but it lacks an overarching youth policy. The National Youth Policy (Government of Kenya, 2006) has been under review since the introduction of the new constitution in 2010. A robust youth policy would provide a more solid foundation for youth employment and inclusion policies and programmes.

A number of policies partially fill this void: the first is the Vision 2030, which outlines Kenya’s plan to become a middle-income country and has a strong focus on human resource development (Government of Kenya, 2007). It has the goal of increasing transition rates to high-quality, relevant secondary education. Universities and technical training institutes are also flagged as important for ensuring that young Kenyans have the necessary skills for productive working lives (ibid.).

To action goals of Vision 2030, the Government has drafted a series of Medium-Term Plans (MTPs). The latest runs from 2018 to 2022 and details some priorities relevant to youth employment, including increasing the ratio of formal to informal sector employment from 13% to 40%, creating an additional 6.5 million jobs, developing a labour market information system and scaling-up national revolving funds, i.e. Uwezo Fund and YEDF (Government of Kenya, 2018a). In addition, the President’s “Big 4 Agenda” (four key development initiatives he has sought to prioritise during his final term), focuses on food security, universal health care, housing, and manufacturing.

The Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) is a three-year rolling framework that links policy to planning, budgeting and implementation of projects and programmes (IEA and University of Notre Dame, 2018). Every year the National Treasury issues guidelines on the form, content and presentation of the budget proposals to be considered for funding in the medium term (ibid.).

A number of laws have been passed in recent years that are relevant to youth employment initiatives:

• National Youth Council Act (2009): established a council of young people drawn from eight Provinces to advocate on youth issues;

• TVET Act (2013): established the TVET Authority (TVETA), to create an institutionalised quality assurance and accreditation system and to monitor and evaluate the TVET system;

• Public Procurement and Disposal Regulations, 2006: provides the legal basis for the Access to Government Procurement Opportunities programme (AGPO);

• Public Procurement and Disposal (Preference and Reservations) Regulations, 2011: provides a basis for promoting local, national and regional industry and supporting socio-economic development by defining:

a. the target group and eligibility requirements for benefiting from the preference and reservations schemes;

b. the percentage margin of the preference, where applicable;

c. the goods, works and services set aside or reserved for specified target groups;

d. the regions within which to apply the scheme, and

e. the means of measuring its effectiveness in achieving the objectives.

• Public Procurement and Disposal (County Governments) Regulations (2013): provides the legal basis for the AGPO programme at county level;

• Kenya National Qualification Framework Act (2014): created the Kenya National Qualification Framework, which is designed to address the challenge of the fragmented TVET sector and to harmonise competencies and qualifications;

• National Employment Authority Act (2016): created an authority to enhance employment promotion interventions and to promote access to employment for young people, minorities, and marginalised groups.

4.2 Addressing the Causes of Unemployment and ExclusionBeyond the national development plans and acts outlined above, there are policies and strategies that address each of the causes of unemployment and exclusion.

4.2.1 Addressing the mismatch between demographic growth and economic growth

The policies that address the mismatch between demographic and economic growth are:

• The National Youth Agribusiness Strategy (2017–2021), which aims to improve access to finance, technology, and markets for young Kenyan farmers;

• The National Industrialization Policy (2012), which fosters micro and small enterprises for employment growth and outlines strategies to address productivity and efficiency;



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• The first National ICT Policy (2006), which ensures accessible, efficient, reliable and affordable ICT services;

• The Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF) (2006), a revolving fund for youth-owned enterprises to create more jobs and opportunities for self-employment;

• The Uwezo Fund (2014), which seeks to enable women, youth, and persons with disability to access finance for self-employment and employment creation;

• The AGPO programme (2013), which gives youth, women and persons with disability-owned enterprises the opportunity to win government contracts by earmarking 30% of government contracts for them.

Unfortunately, these policies have not been comprehensively evaluated for impact on youth employment. However, initial assessments of the Youth Agribusiness Strategy suggest that access to land and finance, low levels of farming knowledge, the absence of extension services, and access to markets remain significant constraints (Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, 2017). The AGPO programme has been evaluated and it was found that only 7.7% of contracts over KSh 7 million were awarded to AGPO firms. Despite this, there has been a 71% increase in the annual revenue of youth-owned enterprises as a result of AGPO. The benefits of AGPO, it appears, have been felt most strongly in Nairobi where 67% of AGPO registered firms are based, followed by Mombasa with 6% and Kiambu county with 5% of all AGPO registered businesses (HIVOS, 2018).

4.2.2 Addressing the mismatch between skills and labour market requirements

There are a number of policies that have been designed to address the lack of skills in the labour market:

• The National Internship Policy seeks to provide educated but unemployed young people with work experience and transferable skills;

• The National Youth Service (relaunched in September 2014) seeks to train young people in a variety of skills – fashion, business management, construction trades, etc.;

• Youth Empowerment Centres will be established in every constituency in the country to provide health services, ICT facilities, library and information services, and training facilities to young people;

• Kenya Youth Employment and Opportunities Programme (KYEOP) (World Bank 2016), is a joint World Bank and Government of Kenya project to provide youth with labour-market relevant skills and entrepreneurship support. It has four components: to improve youth employability, support for job creation, improve labour market information and strengthen youth policy development.

Of the above, only the KYEOP has been evaluated. The programme trained 20,384 young people (47% female) and placed 13,289 young people (49% female) in internships. An impact assessment of the project revealed that 80 per cent of the youth who benefited from the intervention reported that they were in paid work 14 months after completion of an internship compared with 69 per cent in the control group, representing an 11 per cent point gain (KYEOP, 2017).

4.2.3 Addressing the imbalance between demand for education and job opportunities

Kenya’s Vision 2030 to become a middle-income economy pins its hopes on TVET to develop the human resources needed to realise its goals. The national government promotes access to and regulates industrial, technical and vocational training standards through two key agencies: the National Industrial Training Authority (NITA) and the Technical and Vocational Education Training Authority (TVETA). NITA was established as a state corporation established under the Industrial Training (Amendment) Act of 2011, to promote industrial training.

TVETA was created to ensure quality training and to standardise the national qualifications framework as well as undertaking surveys on employability of TVET graduates in partnership with industry (TVETA, 2018). The TVET Act (2013) highlights the need for quality Competency-Based Education and Training (CBET) programmes that correspond to labour market needs. The increased focus on quality requires considerable resources to construct and equip training centres with appropriate technology and to hire qualified instructors (TVETA, 2018). However, for now, increased access to vocational training is being felt more than efforts to increase its quality, at the grassroots.

4.2.4 Addressing Youth Exclusion

The Constitution of Kenya provides for youth representation in the Senate and for the nomination of youth representatives to the National Assembly. The Vision 2030 also emphasises youth inclusion and the need to create an equal distribution of power and resources between the sexes and among vulnerable groups, including youth. This has resulted in the creation of more inclusive policies, as outlined above under Cause 1. However, the absence of a National Youth Policy means that youth exclusion has not been addressed satisfactorily to date.

4.3 Regional Policy Responses – The Lake Region Economic Bloc Policy FrameworkThe Lake Region Economic Bloc has existed for five years but remains a nascent institution. Its key structures are still under development and many counties have yet to pass the enabling legislation for inter-county transfers that will enable it to function fully. Consequently, its work on youth employment and inclusion is limited, but in future, it will



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provide a policy framework that lies between that of the national government and counties.

The Bloc has drafted a “blueprint” which identifies the following priorities:

• Investment in productive sectors: agriculture, tourism, trade, and industry;

• Support of social sectors: education, health, water, environment, climate change, gender, people with disabilities (PWDs), and youth;

• Enablers: ICT, financial services and infrastructure.

Against this backdrop, the Bloc has formed a “pillar” on Gender Mainstreaming, PWDs, Youth and Minorities. To date, its main activity has been to raise awareness among counties on issues concerning these groups, but also includes generating data for policymaking and organising training.

The Bloc also has three flagship programmes, which may have a bearing on youth issues. The first is the establishment of a regional bank, which has the explicit aim of improving access to finance. The second is the revival of the sugar and tea industries, to promote employment. The third is improving transport on Lake Victoria to stimulate the movement of trade and people in the region.

4.4 The County Policy Framework: Focus on the six selected countiesThe county policy framework is primarily determined by each five-year County’s Integrated Development Plan (CIDP), which are – theoretically – aligned with Vision 2030 and the “Big 4 Agenda” (Government of Kenya, 2018b). CIDPs should identify local, context-specific needs around these strategies and determine priorities for devolved functions. CIDPs for the six counties under review in this report (Busia, Kakamega, Kisii, Kisumu, Nandi, Siaya) all identified youth unemployment as a key concern.

Addressing the root causes of discrepancies between population and economic growth (Cause 1) mainly falls under the responsibilities of central government. However, counties also intervene in this area through small-scale job creation initiatives, including public works programmes or internships at county offices (see Case Study 2 on Vocational Training in Kisii).

County policies focus, however, on addressing the mismatch between skills and labour market requirements (Cause 2). These fall very clearly under certain devolved responsibilities, namely education and training. Primary and secondary education is not a devolved function, so counties focus on the expansion of vocational training. To this end, a number of county governments have created a legal framework, such as County Polytechnic Acts. This legal framework gives county governments the mandate

to establish village polytechnics. (See Case Study 2 on Vocational Training in Kisii).

However, CIDPs do not provide detailed implementation plans or budgets and do not prioritise among initiatives. Where policies and programmes are suggested they are not always actioned in the annual development plans. Finally, even if all suggested initiatives were implemented, this would still be inadequate for addressing the scope of the problem.

4.4.1 Budget Allocations to “Youth Affairs”

Guided by the 5-year CIDP, county executives develop the County Annual Development Plan (CADP), which outlines policy goals and priorities, with a view to realising the CIDP goals. From the CADP, counties draft their County Fiscal Strategy Paper (CFSP), which sets out the ceilings for each sector or department and provides key economic data and assumptions used to formulate the budget (International Budget Partnership, 2017). Every department in the county then develops project budgets within the ceiling provided in the CFSP.

Youth affairs is a specific responsibility across all counties, and so included in budgets, although it is often combined with other issues/sectors, such as Social Services, Sports and Gender. The funds allocated to youth affairs make up only a small percentage of county budgets and do not reflect the prevalence of unemployed youth in the counties. It is also not possible to ascertain from these documents which specific youth-focused activities or services will be funded from these budget lines. See Table 1 for a summary of budget allocations to departments responsible for youth in county budgets for the 2018/2019 financial year.

Youth polytechnics fall under departments of education and so are not included under budget allocations for youth affairs. Education, which is seen as a social service or within the county’s social protection agenda, receives higher allocations than youth affairs.

Country Department % of County Budget estimated in ADP

1 Busia Youth, Culture, Sports, Tourism and Social Services

3.8%

2 Kakamega Social Services, Youth Empowerment and Sports

6.2%

3 Kisii Culture, Sports, Youth and Social Services

5.17%

4 Kisumu Tourism, Culture, Arts and Sports

12.89%

5 Nandi Youth, Sports and Gender

10%

6 Siaya Education, Youth Affairs, Gender and Social Services

12%

Table 1: Budget for ‘Youth Affairs’ by County



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The table below (table 2) shows budget allocations to the education docket (including youth polytechnics, early childhood development and, in some counties, ICTs) as a proportion of the total budget.

A significant proportion of the education and sports budgets are designated for infrastructure projects, e.g. construction of stadia, classrooms or workshops. Interviewees were unanimous in their conclusion that there is inadequate investment in skills building and entrepreneurship development to meet the scale of the challenge. Many complained of understaffed and under-resourced TVET centres that did not provide market-relevant education.

4.4.2 Youth Policies

None of the six selected counties have enacted county youth policies, though some efforts had been made, with varying effectiveness. The policy environment of the six selected LREB counties can be summarised as follows:

• Kisumu: The County Youth Policy was developed in 2015, but there was no public participation process and it was not passed by the County Assembly. The county youth policy was put on hold in November 2018 until the national youth policy process is completed.

• Nandi: The 2018/2019 Annual Development Plan reports that a budget was set aside for the drafting process, but in the end no funds were disbursed for this purpose.

• Siaya: The county has written a draft County Youth Policy, which identifies youth unemployment and underemployment as key issues. It has not been passed by the County Assembly and serves only as a reference point for policy discussions.

• Kisii, Busia, and Kakamega did not have a youth policy to guide their work. Kakamega does, however, have a Youth Service Act (from 2018) to promote youth participation,

training, and employment within county structures (see Case Study 1 on Kakamega County).

The absence of county youth policies is the result of two primary challenges: the first is that youth is not a devolved function (or even a function) according to the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution; the second is that the National Youth Policy remains a draft, rather than a policy that counties can ‘domesticate’. As a result, there is a lack of coherence in the approach to youth issues in counties.

The youth employment agenda is particularly affected by this gap in county policy, as it requires greater funding. As many respondents pointed out, “funding follows function”, meaning that funding is not allocated directly to youth employment creation.

4.4.3 Employment Policies

In some counties employment policies partially fill the gap of County Youth Policies. Kisii County, for example, addresses the issue of youth employment in its County Social Protection Policy, which establishes a revolving fund to create jobs (Article 3.3). Since 2014, a budget of KSh 10m (approx. GBP 73,000) has been allocated to the Fund, but it has yet to disburse any money.

Kisumu, Nandi, and Kakamega Counties have also established credit schemes for traders including young people. In Nandi County, for instance, the Trade Credit Scheme has been in place for five years with an annual kitty of approximately KSh 20 million (approx. GBP 146,000). Unfortunately, these counties did not have data on the proportion of young traders participating in the scheme. Other counties also implemented similar, albeit smaller and ad hoc initiatives but these lacked a strategic policy framework, youth focus, and impact.

Where counties did not have specific employment policies, they relied on a number of national government funds to increase (self)employment opportunities in the county, including:

• Uwezo Entrepreneurship Fund, through which women and youth can access financial support for their businesses;

• Youth Economic Development Fund for youth entrepreneurs;

• Kenya Youth Employment and Opportunities Programme to provide youth with skills and entrepreneurship support.

4.4.4 Addressing Youth Inclusion Issues

Counties relied on constitutional requirements for citizen involvement to fulfil their obligations around youth inclusion and participation. Only Kisii County exceeded these basic constitutional requirements with the County’s Social Protection Policy, which promotes youth and women’s participation in community and civic affairs.

Country Department % of County Budget estimated in ADP

1 Busia Education and Vocational Training

7.2%

2 Kakamega Education, Science and Technology

12.5%

3 Kisii Education, Labour and Manpower Management

8.1%

4 Kisumu Education, Human Resources Development and ICT

6.98%

5 Nandi Education and Vocational Training

7%

6 Siaya Education incorporates youth affairs in previous table

n/a

Table 2: Budget for Vocational Training by County



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Youth MCAs – provided for under the Constitution – have a mixed record. We found that their ability to represent youth in the county was determined by a number of factors, including whether they received support and capacity building, how secure their seat in the Assembly was, and the priorities of the nominating party. Some respondents complained that (youth) MCAs are always in campaign mode and prefer to be associated with prestigious infrastructure projects than with youth employment policies (FGD, Siaya County).

4.5 Successes and Failures in Addressing Youth Unemployment and Exclusion County policy frameworks lack coherence and do not address the scale of the youth employment and inclusion problem, in large part due to the lack of county youth policies and the nature of devolved functions. The successes and failures of the policies, strategies, and structures that make up the youth employment and inclusion landscape are discussed below.

4.5.1 Addressing the mismatch between population and job growth

While addressing this issue falls mainly under the auspices of central government, there are some county initiatives, which address the imbalance between population and job growth. For example, all six selected counties implemented an internship programme at the county offices, in an effort to provide work and training opportunities. However, the number of applications received far outstrips the number of positions available, with Nandi County, for example, receiving over a thousand applications. Busia went further by drafting an internship policy that will require companies and factories to provide internship opportunities to youth. Kakamega County did most on this front (as discussed in Case Study 1 on Kakamega County) and passed a Youth Service Act in 2018 to provide young people with training and work, such as street cleaning. Kisii County was able to report some success, by virtue of the fact that it has drafted a county employment policy, but the effects of this policy remain to be seen.

Uptake of nationally provided funds, such as Uwezo and YEDF, was mixed: while some counties, such as Kakamega, had achieved high disbursement rates, the respective repayment rates were low. Where uptake was lower, repayment rates tended to be higher, suggesting that young entrepreneurs require more support to succeed. Given the difficulties in managing such funds, Nandi County chose to encourage youth to form SACCOs (Savings and Credit Cooperatives) instead.

The policies with the biggest potential for creating employment are national sectoral policies. However, respondents reported that the industrialisation and ICT sectoral policies were not felt by young people in

any meaningful way in their counties. The Agriculture Sector Development Strategy and National Youth Agribusiness Strategy, on the other hand, have led to the implementation of activities at the county level. These include the formation of youth cooperatives and efforts to ensure that extension services reach young people (here Kisumu and Kakamega counties had made the most progress). The fact that agricultural development is a relatively well-funded, devolved function contributed to these successes.

The Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (AGPO) law has also had a significant impact on youth entrepreneurship, despite problems with the implementation of this law, especially identifying young people who had the capacity to deliver large contracts. The issues around AGPO are further discussed in the case study on AGPO.

In summary – and as one might expect – counties have done relatively little work on job creation to address youth unemployment, particularly with regards to creating sustainable, private-sector employment opportunities.

4.5.2 Addressing the mismatch between education and labour market demands

Addressing the mismatch between education and labour market demands is where county governments have the potential to make the greatest impact. Vocational training provision has been devolved to counties, creating overlap between youth employment needs and county responsibilities. It has also created some confusion due to a lack of harmonisation between VTCs and the qualifications they provide, while counties have not fully implemented their vocational training acts.

Counties have concentrated their efforts on increasing enrolment, as county government receives an additional KSh15,000 (approx. GBP 115) for each student enrolled in a VTC, with some success. Demand for vocational education has increased from 148,009 enrolled students in 2013 to 275,139 in 2017 across private and public TVET institutions in Kenya. Female enrolment during the period increased by 3.3% to 43.8% of total enrolment (KNBS, 2018). While some of this increase can be attributed to better reporting of enrolment, evidence from the fieldwork suggests that it is also due to county efforts.

Beyond encouraging enrolment, counties have constructed additional training centres with devolved funds. However, this success has been diminished by the difficulties experienced in equipping centres and recruiting sufficient numbers of qualified trainers. A major gap in vocational training provision is the “blue” economy: none of the VTCs in the LREB provide training on fisheries or marine trades. In addition, training provision has been criticised for not addressing the diversity of youth needs.



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In addition to vocational training provision, several counties also provided ad hoc training to youth through their professional associations, ranging from street traders to boda boda riders. While these efforts are insufficient to address the needs of young people in informal employment, these programmes allow young people to work while learning.

4.5.3 Addressing the imbalance between demand for education and job opportunities

The majority of opportunities for productive employment are found in the informal sector and necessitate self-employment, however the majority of young people aspire to be employed in the formal sector. This is reflected in attitudes towards vocational training and polytechnics. These suffer from poor reputations, not only because they are poorly resourced, but because they train young people for careers that are considered low status. Finally, VTCs are still often referred to as village polytechnics, which have a negative association and puts young people off.

In addition, counties have not ensured that vocational training prepares young people for trades that are in demand on the labour market and, therefore, lucrative. The courses on offer are provided not due to labour market demand, but because trainers and equipment are available. The capacity for an analysis of labour market demands, unfortunately, does not exist at the county level (IEA and University of Notre Dame, 2018).

4.5.4 Addressing youth exclusion and involving youth in governance

As young people are identified as a disadvantaged group in the Constitution their participation in public policymaking is respected at the county level. Not only are they represented in the County Assemblies, some counties have included youth on their procurement and public service appointment boards (e.g. Nandi and Kakamega).

Kakamega county has set up a County Youth Committee that is comprised of youth representatives from the 12 sub-counties (including persons living with disabilities) and the Youth Advisor in the Governor’s office. Youth on the committee are elected by their peers at the sub-county level. This Committee is responsible for leading the county’s response on youth employment and inclusion. In addition, Kakamega’s Youth MCAs are members of the Kenya Young MCAs Caucus under the auspices of the Kenya Young Parliamentarians Association (KYPA).

Counties have registered some further youth inclusion successes:

• In Busia, the structures created through the National Youth Council Act have been maintained and are used to consult youth and to disseminate information. This has eased tensions between the County Government and young people;

• Busia has created strong, collaborative relationships between national and county government structures in order to reach youth. As a result, county government was able to leverage the superior resources available to national government;

• Kakamega County has hosted a number of strategic youth forums, including a Devolution Youth Conference in 2018 and a Youth in Agribusiness event;

• Siaya has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Kenya Roads Authority to ensure that youth are employed in road construction and have equitable access to resources.

In other words, due to constitutional provisions youth are relatively well represented in county (as well as national) structures. However, these provisions can only guarantee the presence of youth, but not the quality of their participation in politically important processes. It is often the case that young people are given a seat at the table but are not heard. This may be the result of intentional actions by more powerful political actors, but more often than not it is the result of a failure to invest in their training and to facilitate their participation. In other cases, it is because other members of the county executive or assembly feel that they have fulfilled their obligation to youth by having them at the table, rather than viewing this as a starting point for improved policymaking. Finally, it is fairly common for youth to be used to further party-political interests. This happens, for example, where youth feel they owe their position to a party and come under pressure to represent a party over representing their youth constituents.

Policymakers also complained about young people’s unwillingness to participate in the initiatives designed for them. When probed, many said that youth had not been involved in the design of these and so it is possible that they were either not relevant to young people or that they were not aware that these opportunities exist. In Kakamega, where youth are involved more extensively in policymaking and the design of initiatives, these problems were less pronounced. Further, where counties were creative and pro-active with youth engagement – for example contacting youth through social media channels – they were much more effective at reaching target audiences.

Counties have also experienced a number of setbacks:

• The National Youth Council’s term has now expired, and there have been no efforts by national government to undertake the necessary steps to establish a new representation structure. Thus, there is no formal mechanism for youth engagement with county and national government (except where created by counties themselves).



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• Youth representatives, whether MCAs or young people working with the County Executive, lack access to necessary data, evidence and policy analysis that would allow them to better represent their peers.

• As youth do not have a formal platform to voice issues and identify priorities, they receive less attention in the CIDP. Rather than taking a proactive approach to youth issues, the six counties in this study tend to follow national government priorities, focus on devolved functions and deal with youth issues in an ad hoc manner.


CASE STUDY 1KAKAMEGA COUNTY’S EMPLOYMENT CREATION EFFORTS

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What causes are being addressed?There is a significant mismatch between population growth and job growth in Kakamega County (refer to ‘Cause 1’ above). The county economy is not creating sufficient jobs and, of the new jobs created, the majority are in the informal sector. Kakamega’s Youth Service Act aims to create job opportunities in the areas of cleaning and road maintenance.

Case study 1: Kakamega County’s employment creation efforts

How are the Youth Service Act and other policies implemented?The Kakamega Youth Service Act is implemented by the County Governor, with the assistance of his County Executive Committee Members, and the Ministry of Social Services, Youth, Sports and Culture. Also, a Director has been appointed to oversee the operations of the County Youth Service established under the Act. The Governor has also appointed a County Youth Leader, who advises the county leadership.

The County Government has also created a Youth Committee, with representatives from the 12 sub-counties and one young person living with disability, which allows youth and the county government to collaborate. Among other things, this Committee also advises the County Youth Service. Youth are also represented on the County Budget and Economic Forum, which promotes dialogue between government and citizens. Youth representation on this forum is meant to ensure that they are included in development planning and decision-making, and that the county government meets the needs of young people.

What are some successes? • Large numbers of youth are applying to the County Youth

Service and some are earning a livelihood.

• The County Government has structures to engage youth. These include, the County Youth Committee, Representatives in the Budget and Economic Forum, County Executive Committee Member, Director of Youth Service, County Youth Advisor, County Youth Leader. While operationalisation of the structures still remains a challenge, this is a good starting point.

• Youth empowerment is a priority in both the Governor’s manifesto and the CIDP.

Where have there been failures?• Misunderstandings and conflict between the Executive

and County Assembly impede implementation of the County Youth Service Programme.

• Citizens have not realised the importance of public participation. The County Government should establish programmes to enlighten the citizens on their role in devolution.

Background Kakamega County does not have a youth policy, but it plans to domesticate the National Youth Policy, which is currently undergoing review. There is a Youth Service Act for Kakamega (2018), which promotes youth participation, provides training and employs youth “to undertake tasks on the devolved functions of the county and otherwise in the service of the county.” Mainly this service offers young people employment in road maintenance, cleaning, agribusiness, and the provision of security for county government assets.

In addition, Kakamega’s CIDP has prioritised youth economic empowerment and talent development, by providing young people with entrepreneurial training and, in some cases, equipment to start their businesses.


CASE STUDY 2WHAT HAS BEEN ACHIEVED IN VOCATIONAL TRAINING PROVISION IN KISII COUNTY?

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Background This case study looks at the experience of Kisii County with vocational training and provides insights into the challenges that county governments are facing on this front and what they have, nevertheless, achieved.

County governments have specific responsibility for youth skills development at the county level through the public youth polytechnics – referred to in the KNBS and other documents as VTCs. To give effect to this provision county governments are expected to develop appropriate policies, and/or laws through the appropriate agency. In Kisii County, polytechnics are managed by the County Executive within the Department of Education, Labour and Manpower Development, Directorate of Vocational Training.

Which cause is being addressed?Lack of adequate skills among young people is a key concern in Kisii (refer to ‘Cause 2’ above). It is estimated that only 46% of the total labour force is literate implying that only a relatively small population can be absorbed into formal employment. More vocational training is needed to enhance skills in both the formal and informal sectors (Kisii County, 2017). There is also a mismatch between demand for education and available opportunities (Cause 3, above). There are opportunities for youth employment in the leather industry and agriculture. However, the skills training available does not provide for training in these areas. Research demonstrates that young people are keen on white collar jobs, particularly, in county offices (Kisii FGD).

How have the relevant policies been implemented in Kisii?Goal 4 of the Kisii County Integrated Plan 2018 – 2022 aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (ibid.). Youth polytechnics are a specific strategy to meet this goal as they “increase and improve access to specialised skills for self-employment and empowerment” (ibid.).

To meet this goal, the County estimates that it needs KSh 131 million (approximately GBP 1 million) in 2018/2019

Case study 2: What has been achieved in vocational training provision in Kisii county?

to refurbish and construct polytechnics, and purchase equipment. An additional KSh 135 million (approximately GBP 1 million) are needed to promote enrollment, by providing bursaries to all students at the polytechnics (ibid.).

The Village Polytechnic Act 2015 mandates the county to establish village polytechnics run by councils that provide full time and part time courses. The councils determine how to run the institutions including which courses to offer and how to raise funds to equip and run their institutions. The polytechnics may be established by the county government or privately by individuals, groups or firms.

There have been efforts to create an internship scheme for polytechnic students or graduates. However, this is an ad hoc scheme implemented by the Kisii County Department of Education without a policy framework to support its implementation. This means that when there are no projects in the Department there are no opportunities for young people.

What are some of the successes and failures?The County has been successful in increasing access to vocational training: between 2013 and 2017 there was an increase in the number of polytechnics from 23 to 49 and in enrolled students from a few hundred to 3,882 (ibid.)

Kisii County faces the challenge of delivering appropriate courses and courses of interest to young people. The courses taught are based on the 33 NITA approved trades, but most youth polytechnics do not offer the full range. Across Kisii polytechnics, only 13 of the 33 trades are taught and there is no mechanism for ensuring that these correspond to job opportunities or young people’s interests. Instead, they are chosen because teaching personnel and training equipment are available. Commonly, therefore, the following courses are taught: masonry, clothing and textile, dressmaking, electrical engineering, woodwork, beauty therapy, building and construction, and mechanical engineering (vehicle mechanics). These are not provided necessarily based on interest and labour market needs, but rather on the availability of teaching personnel and training equipment/resources. Popular courses, such as motor vehicle mechanics and mechanical engineering have suffered from a lack of equipment and few young people are able to take these courses. Welding and electrical engineering is only provided where electricity is available; and leatherwork is only provided in one polytechnic as there are no leatherwork or shoe making industries in the county.

Additionally, youth polytechnics face the challenge of low demand. Both parents and youth see technical and


CASE STUDY 2WHAT HAS BEEN ACHIEVED IN VOCATIONAL TRAINING PROVISION IN KISII COUNTY?

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vocational trades as “dirty”, not progressive or respectable. In addition, there is no guarantee of employment after training and most graduates end up working in the informal sector.

Finally, there is no longitudinal data in the county on the most marketable trades or on graduate salaries and young people often lack the information necessary to choose between courses. Nevertheless, a 2015 survey on enrolment in youth polytechnics in Kisii found that youth enrolled for courses with high potential for employment at the end of training, including dressmaking tailoring, carpentry, joinery and masonry - where graduates could find work in the growing housing developments in the county and surrounding tea factories (Maronga et al., 2015).

What are the recommendations?• Formalise a labour scheme for polytechnic students and/

or graduates to practice their trade for a stipulated period before they enter the formal labour market.

• Conduct a County Skills Audit to determine opportunities in the industry and the skills required and tailor the polytechnic courses accordingly.

• Enhance youth empowerment and youth employment by implementing the strategies outlined in the Kisii CIDP. These include construction of an arts studio, incubation centres to promote entrepreneurship, talent academy, sports academy, and setting up revolving funds.

• County Government should develop a youth employment strategy to consolidate ideas and streamline approaches to youth employment.


CASE STUDY 3ACCESS TO GOVERNMENT PROCUREMENT OPPORTUNITIES

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Background In 2013, the President of Kenya directed that 30 per cent of all government procurement should be allocated to businesses run by Youth, Women and Persons with Disabilities. Accounting Officers and Heads of Procurement Entities were required to observe and ensure compliance in reporting on the scheme’s implementation. The Presidential directive has since been adopted as law: the Access to Government Procurement Opportunities (AGPO) Programme. Counties have adopted AGPO to give 30% of all government tenders to women, youth and persons with disabilities. County governments see AGPO as a key strategy for tackling youth unemployment.

To qualify for AGPO, businesses must have at least 70% youth/marginalised group membership and 100% youth/marginalised group leadership as well as all the necessary tax and professional certifications, business registration documents and a bank account. With an AGPO certificate, businesses can seek opportunities for government contracts across counties.

All the counties visited for this report indicated they are implementing AGPO, but in the absence of a county-specific legal framework it is unclear how well it is being implemented. Although County governments encourage youth to take-up government procurement opportunities, payments are regularly delayed: something that has discouraged and frustrated many young entrepreneurs.

In Siaya County, the Assembly is pushing for legislation and a policy framework to implement the “30% preference in procurement.” Kakamega County indicated that it has a Service Delivery Unit to check on the implementation of development programmes, including access to procurement opportunities, to ensure that county plans are implemented properly and on time. However, there is no data to show progress or results.

There have been some successesAlthough there has been no formal evaluation of AGPO at county level, interviews in the six counties suggested that preferential procurement has helped some youth to make money and earn a living through supplying goods and services to the government. Some county governments

Case study 3: Access to Government Procurement Opportunities

post information on their websites, provide hard copy documents, organise meetings with the youth and provide necessary incentives to the youth to participate in AGPO and other county programmes and processes. Where this does not happen, young people are unaware of the specific requirements for doing business with government.

Lessons learned• Capacity building. Young people often have inadequate

skills and low motivation for setting up businesses and applying for government contracts. Frequent, short, targeted capacity building sessions are better for building lasting capacity than simply posting information to a website. It is also important to co-ordinate and harmonise youth empowerment projects and to engage all relevant stakeholders including the AGPO programme, youth groups, the private sector and NGOs.

• Financial considerations. Financial issues appear to be one of the main demotivators for young people to work with County Governments. Issues to examine are: reducing the fees for registering a complaint and delays in payment by procurement agencies.

• Accountability and transparency. There is no information on how many young people benefit from preferential procurement mechanisms under AGPO. Preparation of quarterly reports would improve accountability and transparency for this important mechanism. Agencies such as the Uwezo Fund, YEDF, and the Women’s Enterprise Fund should be better coordinated, minimise silo operations and support AGPO initiatives.

Young people’s frustrations with AGPO mainly relate to access to financeDespite some successes, interviews also suggested that the number of youths who have applied for government tenders has been low. The main reasons appear to be financial. Many procurement agencies pay after lengthy delays, and only provide an invoice to facilitate discounting arrangements with banks to advance credit to youth who apply. Interviews indicated the presence of corruption in how preference reservations were allocated, such as extorting money from applicants in exchange for contract approval. In addition, the fees for registering a complaint when someone believes that they have been unfairly denied a contract are high (Ksh 250,000/GBP 2,000). These challenges disadvantage young people who do not have access to those levels of funds or who cannot afford delays in payment.

LESSONS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES

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This section summarises the international experience with youth unemployment policies and youth employment programmes. It seeks to answer the question: what policies work and how have the more successful countries implemented youth employment programmes?

5.1 What works in youth employment policies: evidence from the international contextWhile there is abundant research on youth employment policies in low and middle-income countries and on devolution, there is little research on what happens at the intersection between youth employment policies and devolution in contexts comparable to Kenya. This section outlines:

• Evidence on what works in youth employment policies and programmes generally;

• Experiences from devolved contexts using an example from the UK;

• Lessons for labour market policies in devolved contexts.

5.1.1 Addressing Cause 1: mismatch between population growth and economic growth

Public works programmes are widely used in developing countries to increase employment, including for young people. These incentivise employers to hire young people, subsidising wages or providing compensation for their lower productivity and the costs of training (Glick et al., 2015). These are essentially job creation efforts, designed to lower the risk of displacing older workers in the labour market (Fox and Kaul, 2018). One example of a wage subsidy programme from South Africa is provided in Box 2.

The lessons from these programmes are:

• Where governments attempt to create employment directly this leads to short-term, but not long-term, increases in youth employment. However, with substantive on-the-job training, more young people will find work after the end of subsidised employment as the initial costs of hiring inexperienced youth no longer falls on the private sector (Glick et al., 2015).

• A systematic review by the ILO found that the design features of wage subsidy programmes – including targeting of particular groups, means of transfer of the subsidy, the size of the subsidy as well as its duration, and the inclusion of training and other services – strongly influence effect sizes (Kluve et al, 2017).

• Although such schemes may improve job prospects for youth, the risk is that this leads to older people being displaced from their employment (Fox and Kaul, 2018).

Box 2: The Employment Tax Incentive (ETI) in South Africa

To incentivise employers to hire youth, the South African Revenue Service provided tax credit to enterprises if they hired a young person in the given age range.

Impact and results were mixed:

• Quasi-experimental studies found no significant increases in the probability that young people would be employed;

• One study found that employers were in favour of the policy, even though 8 out of 10 businesses did not think the initiative created jobs for young people. This was because they prioritised training youth over creating employment or receiving tax benefits;

• Workers organisations were critical of the programme, which they saw as potentially displacing existing or older workers, if companies were interested in claiming tax breaks;

• Detractors argued that shortcomings in the policy design – a lack of awareness of the policy among firms, the short duration of the initiative, and the lack of a compulsory skills training component – would significantly limit the effectiveness of the policy in terms of youth employment creation.

(See: Ranchhod and Finn 2015; De Jongh et al., 2016; Ebrahim et al. 2017, Odendaal, 2016)

Entrepreneurship support and promotion is another form of job creation, given that opportunities for formal wage employment are often limited in developing countries. According to the ILO School-to-Work Transition Survey, seven out of ten youth in the eight surveyed countries in sub-Saharan Africa, were self-employed (Elder and Kone, 2014).

Entrepreneurship promotion seeks to address the most common challenges young people face in establishing and maintaining a business. These include poor access to finance such as affordable credit (including microfinance), lack of business skills and experience and high taxes on small businesses (Kluve et al., 2017). Efforts typically aim to provide entrepreneurial skills, facilitate access to finance, provide start-up grants, technical support services and micro-franchising (franchising for small businesses) in order to lower the costs of establishing and maintaining a business and coaching or mentorship (ibid.).



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The following lessons have been learned from entrepreneurship programmes:

• Entrepreneurship support increases youth economic activity: A systematic review found that this support led to increased numbers of business start-ups, along with business performance and earnings, and employment (ibid.). There are some concerns, however, about the long-term effects and cost-effectiveness of these interventions (Betcherman and Khan, 2015; Grimm and Paffhausen, 2015).

• Multi-pronged approaches produce better results: Skills training alone did not show positive impact on business performance (Kluve et al., 2017); nor do interventions that only promote access to finance (Grimm and Paffhausen, 2015). Positive outcomes are brought about where mentoring, technical support, financial assistance, and training are combined (Glick et al., 2015).

• Targeting leads to better outcomes: Programmes that address a specific challenge or obstacle, such as lack of finance in post-conflict situations, do better than those that plan for multiple outcomes (Kluve et al., 2017).

• Creating additional jobs: There is little evidence to suggest that entrepreneurship promotion creates additional jobs through new or larger businesses (Kluve et al., 2017; Betcherman and Khan, 2015). Enhancing self-employment appears to be easier than expanding employment in existing firms (Grimm and Paffhausen, 2015).

5.1.2 Addressing Cause 2: mismatch between available skills and skills in demand

The most common youth employment intervention in Africa is skills development training, given the continent’s low skills and education base. There are many lessons from across the continent:

• Education works by increasing the probability that young people will find employment. Tertiary education among youth is associated with access to better quality of work both in terms of wages and access to stable employment, compared to youth who have primary education or less (O’Higgins and Moscariello, 2017). Training is more likely to lead to subsequent employment if it is combined with an internship or job placement, and if it is aligned with employer needs (Betcherman and Khan 2015; Glick et al., 2015).

• The private sector is not a panacea: For small and medium sized enterprises, the costs of participating in training initiatives might be too high and capacities and information may be absent or low (Glick et al., 2015).

• Engaging multi-national corporations: There is little evidence on the impact of programmes provided by multi-national corporations and they often exist merely to fulfil corporate social responsibility goals (ibid.).

5.1.3 Addressing Cause 3: education does not prepare young people for job opportunities

There is widespread recognition that the quality of skills training (received after formal education has ended) matters. Lessons include:

• The mode of delivery is important: youth are more likely to find employment after skills training if the programme is run by a private sector actor, as opposed to public training providers, which tend to be of lower quality (Betcherman and Khan, 2015). Public-Private Partnerships have also proven effective for ensuring that programmes are aligned with labour market demands and for creating a national framework for certifying graduates (Glick et al., 2015).

• Recognising and translating skills: Recognising and translating skills acquired through the informal sector still presents a challenge. More research is needed on effective ways to provide accreditation of such skills (ibid.).

Related to the provision of skills training, employment services help young people find and make the most of available opportunities. These typically provide job-placement and job-search assistance through matching and individualised counselling services or mentoring, possibly involving technical or financial assistance. Employment service providers act as mediators between job seekers and employers to address mismatches and information failure (Kluve et al., 2017). However, these services are relevant only where jobs for young people are available, so most of the evidence originates from high income countries. A systematic review suggests that employment services show no evidence of increasing youth employment or earnings in low- and middle-income countries (ibid.) and that most young people in low and middle-income countries find work through social networks (O’Higgins and Moscariello, 2017). Where public employment services do benefit youth, they tend to primarily support skilled, urban young people who are looking for employment in the formal wage sector (Betcherman and Khan, 2015).

One study on an employment matching service in rural areas in Ghana and India showed increases in earnings and employment, mainly because youth living in rural areas face more difficulties in accessing information (Hatayama, 2018). It is possible that when combined with other incentives for job searching, such as lowering transportation costs or the costs of registering with the services, matching services could have a significant impact on youth employment in local areas (ibid.).

The private sector and ICT could be used to deliver better information and mediation between job seekers and employers through initiatives such as SoukTel – a mobile phone messaging service to serve youth who do not have access to internet (Betcherman et al., 2015; Glick et al., 2015). More evidence is needed on the effectiveness of these types of initiatives.



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5.2 Lessons for labour market policies and delivery in devolved contextsAs noted above, youth employment interventions are more likely to succeed if they take account of the characteristics of the target groups and match them to the needs of the local labour market. Information provided by local employers and representatives of the target group helps guide labour market programmes (Giguère, 2005). In theory, decentralisation or devolution helps youth employment initiatives by encouraging flexibility and the ability to rapidly adapt to market developments (Giguère, 2005; Buechs and Lopez-Santana, 2007).

In some devolution models, county governments design and implement their own policies. However, in most countries, even with devolution, central government remains responsible for the broad policy framework and funding. In Canada, Germany and the USA, the programmes are delivered at the local level but are designed in consultation with the various levels of government. A common challenge in this model is the problem of “unfunded mandates,” where there is a mismatch between the responsibilities transferred to county governments and the resources available to them, including professional skills. This has been documented extensively in the South African context (Siddle and Koelbe, 2016).

Another common rationale for devolving labour market initiatives is to address inequalities in the labour market and employ targeted policies and interventions for different regions. In Germany, UK, and Italy, one of the main reasons for decentralising labour market policies has been to create the flexibility needed to integrate disadvantaged groups, who suffer multiple barriers to labour market access and need more specialised or holistic services to access the labour market. Decentralisation also gives county governments the flexibility to tailor labour market policies to local needs (Buechs and Lopez-Santana, 2007). However, the more localised labour market policies are, the more countries may struggle to ensure policy coherence and adequate accountability mechanisms. For end users, the offer of various employment services might appear confusing, disjointed and difficult to navigate.

Countries that follow a model of devolution similar to Kenya’s are likely to struggle with multiple levels of accountability and the administrative burden of fulfilling those accountability requirements. Some countries (including USA, Finland, Germany, and Sweden) have “one-stop agencies” to facilitate greater cohesion between employment services provided by different levels of government and non-governmental actors such as community-based organisations (CBOs). These one-stop shops provide multiple services in one place, such as training, job-matching and other employment services (Hall and Krzyży 2003). They map a young person’s health, personal skills (counselling), education, professional and job requirements as well as other needs to guide the

provision of more holistic approach to youth unemployment (Santos-Brien, 2018). This reduces the complexity of the services available to users and helps them navigate employment support services (Hall and Krzyży 2003).

Box 3: Great Britain’s New Deal for Young People under Devolution

In the UK, policies on employability and skills development were devolved to the elected governments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; to improve employment outcomes. Jobcentre Plus agencies (the national employment service) worked with devolved governments to develop programmes, but provision of unemployment benefits remained with the national body. However, youth and adult skills services were assigned to the democratically elected devolved bodies.

A large-scale evaluation was conducted to explore: 1) the extent to which devolution led to change in employment policies; and 2) whether these policies led to improved employment outcomes (economic activity, and income).

The evaluation findings suggest that there was no significant change in economic activity or income following devolution:

• The nature of devolved powers made it difficult to evaluate the impact: devolved powers were limited to skills and training rather than the whole range of employment support. For example, Jobcentre Plus continued to deliver and oversee employment services including benefits and sanctions across the whole of Great Britain;

• However, broad shifts in employment strategy – including, for instance, greater emphasis on employers’ demands and collaboration between state, individuals and employers – were the same across the devolved and non-devolved bodies. Devolution did not result in different policy approaches;

• Increases in employment rates across the devolved units could not be attributed to devolution and could not be ascribed to the activities of the devolved governments. Wider economic trends were more likely to affect employment rates than devolution.

Adapted from: Bivand et al., 2010



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Another popular approach to addressing youth unemployment is to partner with the private sector, NGOs and/or CBOs to deliver services. In different decentralised and devolved governance systems, partnerships can help coordinate policies and resolve issues of capacity. Partnerships can be either a “one-off affair” that is confined to delivery of a particular service or they can be a regular, institutionalised practice where government partners work with a number of stakeholders to deliver a range of services (Work, 2002).

In many Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, including Ireland, Austria, Canada and the USA, area-based partnerships are a popular choice. Government services, local authorities, employers, trade unions and community-based organisations work together to produce a strategy to adapt national policies to local conditions (Hall and Krzyży 2003).

Box 4 shows how the South Africa Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) implemented and coordinated the implementation of a national employment programme in a devolved policy environment.

Box 4: Implementing South Africa’s Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP)

Set up in 2003, EPWP aims to reduce unemployment by creating temporary work opportunities for “unskilled, unemployed, poor and vulnerable” individuals (Kelobang and Boon, 2018). Opportunities are provided across four thematic areas:

• Infrastructure: labour-intensive construction in low-volume roads, sidewalls, storm water drains

• Environmental: land rehabilitation, recycling program, maintenance of coastline

• Social care: HIV-AIDS patients and early childhood development

• Non-state sector: using wage subsidies to support non-profit and community organisations deliver programmes and services. This was introduced as a new component in 2009

• Economic: enterprise development

• Institutional arrangements: The Department for Social Development and the Department of Public Works are jointly responsible for policy design. The former overseas social protection policy while the latter coordinates and monitors the EPWP (Kelobang and Boon, 2018). Implementation is overseen by sector coordination bodies, while training programs within EPWP are funded by the Department of Labour (DoL) (del Nino et al., 2009). The DoL also oversees the EPWP Training Committee which consists

of representatives from the sector coordination departments including Departments of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs. Provinces and municipalities deliver the programme with support from the national government sector coordinating departments (Mfusi and Govender, 2015), who report regularly to the Cabinet on their respective sector’s progress in the EPWP (ibid.).

Funding for EPWP projects and programmes comes from the national (line departments) and provincial governments, along with the municipalities’ budgets (del Nino et al., 2009). Decentralising the funding sources and mechanisms serves three purposes: 1) to ensure coordination and implementation; 2) to enable access to a large and varied number of resources; and 3) to enable scaling up (Mfusi and Govender, 2015).

Results: Since 2003, the EPWP programme has generated over 8 million jobs (Kelobang and Boon, 2018). Training is compulsory for projects targeting youth participants and is intended to ensure that youth graduate to formal or self-employment after their participation in the programme ends. Official statistics show that 70% of EPWP participants have transitioned to longer-term employment (self or formal). Part of its success grew from the programme design. This was based on social dialogue with different stakeholders led by the National Economic Development and Labour Council and enjoyed strong, broad political support (ibid.). It was delivered through existing provincial government structures which helped avoid duplication and increase cost-effectiveness.

LESSONS AND CONCLUSIONS

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LESSONS AND CONCLUSIONS

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The clearest lesson to emerge from this research is that there is a very large discrepancy between the scale of the youth unemployment challenge and the efforts being made to address it through County Governments. The best available estimates suggest that of the 750,000 to 1 million young people who enter the labour market every year, over a quarter are unemployed and many more are underemployed or in precarious employment situations (KNBS, 2017). A problem of this scale requires significant and coordinated interventions in the areas of job creation, skills building, and ensuring that young people have access to existing opportunities. The policies and programmes initiated both at the National and County level – the focus of this report – are inadequate considering the magnitude of the challenge.

Undoubtedly, the most important cause of youth unemployment in Kenya is the mismatch between demographic growth, in particular the high birth rates, and the rate of employment creation. While birth rates have come down considerably from 7.5 live births per woman in 1980 to 3.8 in 2015, there will be large numbers of labour market entrants for several decades to come. These causes are best addressed through macroeconomic and demographic policies by national government, but there is a role for counties in both the demand side (job creation) and supply side (ensuring young labour market participants are prepared for the roles available). Demand side activities include – among other things – investing in the agricultural sector and industrial growth, while supply side interventions include the provision of relevant, affordable, and high-quality education.

However, counties are not able to address the challenge of youth unemployment for a number of reasons. One of the most fundamental stumbling blocks is the lack of clarity around which entity is primarily responsible for youth – national or county government. Linked to this is the availability of resources to address this problem. “Youth employment” as “youth inclusion” are not government functions, nor have their constituent parts been devolved in a way that would facilitate county government interventions. Instead, only one particular dimension of youth employment – vocational training – has been clearly defined and devolved, while youth inclusion is only addressed through the constitution that decrees that all marginalised groups must be consulted by government agencies. The upside is that certain aspects of the youth employment and inclusion challenge receive more attention. The downside is that members of the County Executives and Assemblies are unclear what their mandate is with regard to youth and how best to implement it.

A National Youth Policy, which imposes a coherent framework on national efforts to address these challenges, would go some way to filling this gap by providing county government entities a policy to domesticate. However, this policy has been delayed, adding to the uncertainty and leaving counties to find ways to provide employment services to young people in the absence of adequate resources and policymaking

capacity. None of the counties visited in the LREB had developed and passed their own youth policies, meaning that county budgets were allocated to other functions. Conditional funding was also not used to address youth unemployment, as strict reporting requirements made this difficult in the absence of a youth policy.

In theory, counties could and should use their CIDPs to put forward a more comprehensive approach to youth employment and inclusion. However, CIDPs appear to be a missed opportunity with most providing a list of interventions and programmes that might have some impact on youth employment but for which there is insufficient funding. That said, in situations where the leadership was particularly committed to assisting youth to find gainful employment, CIDPs proved a more effective tool than in other counties.

Beyond the absence of a youth policy, the greatest challenge for counties is the lack of capacity to develop realistic and actionable youth policies and programmes and relatedly the lack of reliable, timely and relevant data. Members of the County Executives and Assemblies do not have even the most basic information on the characteristics of the youth unemployment challenge that they are trying to tackle. Even relatively simple data on the scale of the issue, the types of work young people are engaging in to survive, their skills levels or the kinds of work that they are looking for would provide useful insights. Likewise, labour market demands are, by and large, unknown and therefore employment initiatives and training courses cannot be tailored to specific needs. In turn, this undermines the benefits of addressing the issue within county structures. As a result, counties resort to relatively crude employment creation mechanisms, such as creating internship programmes in the County Executive or employing young people for unskilled infrastructural maintenance works. Basic statistics at the county level would be extremely useful here. However, where these do not exist, some counties have found that engaging youth in advisory roles (through youth representative structures) has helped to improve their engagement in policymaking.

This lack of information is a significant stumbling block to fulfilling the counties’ most important devolved function vis-à-vis youth employment, namely the provision of vocational training.



31

The focus of county governments has been to increase enrolment at VTCs, as this ensures access to additional funding from central government. Yet, while there is inadequate data on the needs of employers and the employment trajectories of graduates from these institutions, the relevance of the skills and training provided remains questionable.

The AGPO initiative has provided opportunities for a small number of youth entrepreneurs. However, it also suffers from the lack of validated, timely data as counties are unable to ascertain what the effect of AGPO has been and whether it is achieving its objective. In the absence of sophisticated monitoring systems, better collaboration and communication between the government (at all levels) and the private sector could go a long way towards ensuring that AGPO achieves its goals.

Where counties have established effective youth consultation and inclusion structures, some of these data issues can be alleviated. While these require considerable work and political will to establish, they can improve the quality of services provided to young people.

Lessons from other countries

There are some clear lessons from other countries that are relevant to the Kenyan context:

1. Youth employment initiatives are at their most effective where job creation (the role of central government) and training provision (the role of devolved entities) are addressed simultaneously.

2. Working with employers to encourage them to train and employ youth is absolutely essential, where labour supply far outstrips demand, as is the case in Kenya. Very little is currently being done along these lines in the LREB.

3. Skills development programmes should not neglect teaching the skills necessary to access opportunities, whether that is through formal employment or self-employment. This should include assisting youth in their search for work, teaching transferable skills, and – where formal employment is rare – teaching the skills necessary for self-employment.

4. Where entrepreneurship and self-employment are key to youth employment, structural challenges must also be addressed, most notably access to finance.

While the literature on the effectiveness of employment programmes in devolved contexts is scarce, there is little evidence to suggest that county governments are more effective at addressing the youth employment challenge. However, some broad lessons can be drawn with respect to governance (infra)structure and the associated challenges for implementing employment policies:

• Firstly, a balance needs to be struck between devolving power to county governments and the capacity of county governments to respond to the needs of their local constituents. Capacity building mechanisms for county government employees are essential, if they are to develop and implement effective policies and employment programmes.

• Secondly, responding effectively to coordination issues is key to ensuring that national and local initiatives and policies reinforce and support each other and avoid duplication.

• Thirdly, collaboration with the private sector is key to ensuring that approaches to employment creation address the needs of the labour market. These are essential at all levels of government, but especially where devolved entities are tasked with identifying local needs.

Donors and NGOs are well-placed in this context to provide capacity-building assistance to county government entities and to share knowledge about the efficacy of employment and inclusion programmes in other countries. They can also be usefully involved in testing innovative forms of youth involvement.

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

7



33

Youth unemployment is a serious, and growing, problem in Kenya. Contrary to some expectations, the advent of devolved government seems to have compounded, rather than ameliorated the problem. Originally expected to take services closer to the people, this research indicates that devolution may have instead clouded responsibility for addressing the problem of youth unemployment. On the one hand, if service delivery has now shifted to the counties, responsibility for improving youth employment rests primarily on counties. On the other hand, it is noteworthy that the national government still retains strategic oversight and links to wider macroeconomic, agricultural and industrial policymaking. Therefore, both the national government and county governments have a role in addressing youth unemployment in accordance to their respective mandates under the Constitution.

It is also important to note that youth is not recognised as a function in the Kenyan Constitution, meaning that it is not mainstreamed in national plans in the same way as health or education. However, pushing for its formal recognition as a function will not be worthwhile, given the urgency of the problem and the time, resources and political capital this would take. Instead, this report recommends a series of interventions that—if well-coordinated—could strengthen current efforts to address youth unemployment and improve the overall strategic direction. Overall, recommendations to address youth unemployment should bear in mind Kenya’s post-2010 governance architecture and the different roles of diverse stakeholders.

RecommendationsThe recommendations for this study are made to the National Government, County Governments, Private Sector, Donors and NGOs as follows:

Recommendations for National Government

• Commit to finalising the National Youth Policy, which clearly devolves responsibility for implementing youth policies and programmes to counties within an overall strategic framework and commit to facilitating inter-county learning about what works to stimulate youth employment.

• Ensure that national job creation efforts and county level efforts, where policies are implemented, are harmonised for improving youth employment. In engagements with the private sector (directly and through membership associations such as KAM, KEPSA and others), ensure that any policies implemented are intentional about job creation for young people directly or through internships that enable experience building to prepare them for the next job.

• Ensure that national efforts take the diversity of youth into account. As youth are not a homogenous group, they will require different policies and interventions, based on skill levels and aspirations.

• Ensure that the school curriculum provides adequate civic education for children, so that they understand the purpose and benefits of participating in policymaking.

• Clarify the roles and create effective platforms for coordination and engagement between the Ministry of Youth Affairs and the Directorate of Youth.

• Commit to making AGPO truly inclusive by reducing the burden of paperwork for young people and creating monitoring mechanisms that increase the transparency of tender awards.

Recommendations for County Governments

• Advocate for the finalisation of the National Youth Policy.

• Develop county specific policies to address youth employment based on the economy, growth sectors and job creation prospects. This should include developing policies to create an enabling environment that encourages investment by the private sector in the county, with the aim of promoting employment creation in the county.

• Establish effective youth representation schemes to facilitate youth inclusion and better understand youth employment challenges, building on the successes of Kakamega and Nandi Counties.

• Generate detailed and disaggregated data to inform policy and decision-making on youth employment, taking into account the diversity of young men and women in terms of gender, skill, ability and aspirations.

• Set up county level working groups to convene and coordinate key stakeholders, particularly the private sector, VTCs, county governments, youth representatives and AGPO programme officials. These would:

a. determine labour market demands for different skill sets in each county;

b. encourage the private sector to play an active role in training unemployed youth; and

c. agree the priority areas for external (national government and donor) support to different activities, including piloting innovative employment generation programmes and evaluating their effectiveness.



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• Improve civic education for youth so that they understand the purpose of participation and their role in policymaking. Likewise, older citizens should be encouraged to view young people as active participants in society rather than as people to be guided by older members of society.

• Create mechanisms for sharing learning between county-level working groups.

• Strengthen the leadership of VTCs and ensure their participation in county level strategy and planning on labour market issues to ensure their responsiveness in how they train youth for employment.

• Focus on providing training centres with quality staff and equipment, rather than building further training centres.

• Collaborate across counties to establish training courses or centres that specialise in the “blue” economy and provide training in fisheries and marine trades.

• Improve accountability mechanisms in the AGPO programme to ensure that only bona fide youth (and other marginalised groups’) businesses benefit. Provide training to individual youth and youth groups on AGPO processes to facilitate their participation.

Recommendations for the Private Sector

• Create training opportunities, take risks with less experienced employees, and provide mentoring opportunities.

• Create job matching, training and advice initiatives that will enable young people to find jobs as well as aid the private sector to find qualified youth.

Recommendations for Donors and NGOs

• Ensure that job creation for young people is at the heart of sector and macroeconomic policy advice and programming and support National and County Governments to develop mainstreaming frameworks for youth intervention programmes.

• Advocate for access to decent work through campaigns to address low wages, poor working conditions and safety, which disproportionately affect young people.

• Build the capacity of county governments to generate and analyse labour market data. Until counties have sufficient capacity to generate and analyse relevant local data, donors should assist counties with this. The first priority should be to conduct analyses on which economic sectors have the most potential to generate not just income but additional jobs.

• Support evidence-based design and implementation of youth employment programmes, monitor progress and share accurate information for learning and strategy development processes.

• Support the development of working groups within and across LREB counties, including inter-county exchanges to share knowledge about the efficacy of different youth employment schemes.

• Collaborate with vocational training providers to develop new training courses that are relevant to county-level and national youth strategies.

• Pilot and test innovative forms of training for young entrepreneurs so they can benefit from the AGPO programme.

• Provide training to youth representatives in County Assemblies to improve oversight of and lobbying on youth issues.

ANNEXES

8


ANNEX 1METHODOLOGY

36

MethodologyAims of the Research The purpose of this research was primarily to determine the effectiveness of county youth employment and inclusion efforts and how these have been implemented following the promulgation of the Constitution and devolution. Where implementation of county specific employment and inclusion policies, programmes or initiatives had begun, the work also looked at how effective this has been and, importantly, whether adequate youth inclusion structures and employment opportunities have been created. This was done from a purposive sample of six counties in the Lake Region Economic Bloc (LREB).

Thus, the overarching aim was to answer the following key research questions:

• Which policies and political structures exist at the county level to address youth employment and inclusion issues?

• How well have these been implemented and what successes/failures have they registered (in terms of youth inclusion, employment creation, encouraging self-employment)?

• What lessons can Kenya learn from the experience of other countries? What can other countries learn from the Kenyan experience?

Priorities for the Research Given the research aims, the priorities for the data collection exercise were to establish what was happening at the county level as a result of the devolution process and more generally, and to understand the impact (if any) that this has had on youth livelihoods and political inclusion. Data analysis was focused on extracting the lessons from this and comparing Kenya’s experience to those of similar countries to see how international experiences might best be applied to the Kenyan context.

There were two key components for the research: the first was the literature review, which ensured that any data generated was grounded in the local and international literature; the second was primary data collection, which provided the information needed to assess the situation in Kenya.

The research plan followed from this and consisted of the following main elements:

• Literature review of international and domestic best practices, to ensure that the research does not duplicate previous work, can speak to international best practices and so that policy recommendations are informed by lessons learned elsewhere. Review of national policies was also an important part of this process.

• Preparation for fieldwork, including county selection, review and analysis of existing policies, identifying key informants, drafting interview and focus group discussion guides. Key to the preparation was making sure that the research team was well-versed in the research questions and were collecting comparable data across counties.

• Fieldwork took place from the 19th of November to the 2nd of December 2018, in the six selected counties. Alex Löwe spent one week in the field, divided equally between Nandi, Kisii and Kisumu Counties, to ensure relevance and comparability of data collected. Raphael Obonyo and Sonia Rasugu spent two weeks collecting data and covered three counties each.

• Data analysis began as soon as data has been collected in the first two counties.

• Report drafting involved all members of the team from the 3rd of December until the 5th of February. The majority of the report was written by Alexandra Löwe and Susan Njambi-Szlapka.

Research MethodsLiterature Review

Naturally, the research began with an extensive desk review of work that had been conducted in the field of youth employment and inclusion through county government initiatives, in Kenya and internationally. The aim of the review was to draw out key lessons domestically and internationally and ensure that the work adds new insights to existing knowledge (research questions 1 and 3).

Literature consulted included:

• Documents provided by DDP on youth employment and inclusion in Kenya;

• Academic literature on “youth employment”, “youth inclusion” in the context of devolution and at the county government level, both in Kenya and in comparable countries;

• Grey and policy literature on best practices in creating youth employment and inclusiveness in a developing country context, particularly through county government.

• Documentation and reports on national policy processes, status and performance of counties and LREB. This includes relevant sections of many documents, including the Vision 2030, employment and affirmative action policies, the Constitution of Kenya, the Intergovernmental Relations Act, the Transition to Devolved Governments Act, the National Government Coordination Act, the Public Finance Government Act, the Urban Areas


ANNEX 1METHODOLOGY

37

and Cities Act, and the County Governments Act for the development of County Integrated Development Plans (CIDP).

Sampling

There are two levels at which sampling was considered. One was county selection; the other was selecting interviewees within those counties.

County selection

Six counties were purposively selected from the 14 that make up the Lake Regional Economic Bloc. The criteria for selecting counties were discussed with DDP, Sonia and Raphael and based on these discussions, we recommended 6 counties to DDP to ensure that everything from fieldwork logistics to DDP partner organisations’ preferences was taken into consideration.

Below is the table that was used to select counties

Respondent selection

The selection of interviewees and participants for focus group discussions followed from the selection of county case studies. Once these had been identified, policy documents for each of the six were collected, including county integrated development plans (CIDP), youth inclusion and employment creation policies (were these existed or were available), implementation plans and progress reports.

Analysis of these documents, and information from Sonia, and Raphael shed light on who the key policymakers, influencers and youth activists were in a given county, to draft a list of key informant interviews for each county.

We identified similar interviewees in each of the counties, except where there were particularly influential organisations or individuals in any county’s political and policymaking landscape. Any active youth organisations were also identified, so that focus group discussions could be organised with youth in each county. A list of our interviewees is provided in Annex 3.

Data collection

Based on available policy documents and the literature review, we drafted interview guides for key informant interviews and focus group discussions. These provided a guide of essential topics to be discussed with the different types of interviewees. The main aim of the guide was to ensure that interviewers were sufficiently flexible, but that comparable data was generated in all counties.

Data Analysis

Sonia, Raphael, and Alex Löwe each took comprehensive notes for the interviews conducted. We developed a consistent framework for taking interview notes and Alex Löwe coded the data. Findings were reviewed as a team, to make sure that the nuances and differences between counties are captured.

Once the main themes and conclusions of the research had been developed, the three case studies were chosen for their ability to provide further insight into one or more of the most important themes to emerge from the research. Sonia and Raphael drafted the case studies, with input from Alex Löwe.

Report writing

Report writing was divided up between the team, Sonia drafted one case study, Raphael drafted two. Alex Löwe and Susan Njambi-Szlapka drafted the rest of the report, with input from Sonia and Raphael.

Limitations of the research• Sampling was purposive to capture as many experiences

as possible across the Lake Regional Economic Bloc and to extract the most important lessons on the intersection between devolution, youth inclusion and employment. However, this also meant that our work is not necessarily representative of the whole country.

• Given timeframes, it was challenging to identify youth who had been excluded from the processes of policy writing and implementation. The majority of youth we interviewed were tied into county government structures and initiatives.

Eth

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ities

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f you

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Incl

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? Vi

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Cou

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Dev

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Clim

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Rur

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Une

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Mig

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n

Pol

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l affi

liatio

n

Con

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ions

Oth

er

1 Siaya

2 Homa Bay

3 Migori

4 Kakamega

5 Bungoma

6 Busia

7 Vihiga

8 Trans Nzoia

9 Kisii

10 Nyamira

11 Bomet

12 Nandi

13 Kisumu

14 Kericho


ANNEX 1METHODOLOGY

38

Validation of findingsAfter completion of the first draft, a validation workshop was held in Kisumu on 15th of March 2019. At the workshop, the research team presented the main findings and recommendations to representatives of government, donors and youth leaders to elicit feedback and comments. A combination of group work, plenary discussion, and the use of a substantiation questionnaire ensure that views from all participants were heard.

These were subsequently incorporated into the report to add nuance to findings and to improve the depth and scope of recommendations.


ANNEX 2REFERENCES

39

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Ramisch, J. (2015) “We Will Not Farm Like Our Parents”: Rural-Urban Linkages, Livelihoods and Food Security in Kenya”. Available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309285094_We_will_not_farm_like_our_parents_Rural-Urban_Linkages_Livelihoods_Food_Security_in_Kenya_SSHRC-funded_project_2015-2020.

Ranchhod, V., and Finn, A. (2015) Estimating the Effects of South Africa’s Youth Employment Tax Incentive–An Update. Available at https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/wp2017-5.pdf.

Rankin, K., Cameron, D., Ingraham, K., Mishra, A., Burke, J., Picon, M., Miranda, J. and Brown, A. (2015) Youth Transferable Skills: An Evidence Gap Map (3ie Evidence Gap Report 2). New Delhi: International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie).

Santos-Brien, R. (2018) Activation Measures for Young People in Vulnerable Situations: Experience from the Ground. Brussels: European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=738&langId=en&pubId=8142&furtherPubs=yes

Siaya County (2017) County Integrated Development Plan (2018–2022). Siaya, Kenya. Available at http://cog.go.ke.

Siddle, A., and Koelble, T. A. (2016) Local Government in South Africa. Research Report No 7. ICLD. Malmö: Exacta Print. Available at https://icld.se/static/files/forskningspublikationer/siddle-koelble-icld-report-7.pdf.

Sikenyi, M. (2017) ‘Does Kenya’s Youth Enterprise Development Fund Serve Young People?’, in IDS Bulletin, 48 (3).

Technical and Vocational Training Authority (2018) Strategic Plan 2018 - 2022. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau.


ANNEX 2REFERENCES

42

Work, R. (2002) The Role of Participation and Partnerships in Decentralised Governance: A Brief Synthesis of Policy Lessons and Recommendations of Nine Case Studies on Service Delivery for the Poor. New York: United Nations Development Programme and Bureau for Development Policy.

World Bank (2011) ‘Gender Differences in Employment and Why They Matter’, in World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development, Washington DC: World Bank Group.

World Bank (2012) Devolution Without Disruption: Pathways to a Successful New Kenya (Vol. 2): Main Report (English). Washington, DC: World Bank Group. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/534071468272361395/Main-report.

World Bank (2015) Kenya Devolution Working Paper Series : Summary Overview. Washington, DC.: World Bank Group. Available at https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/21662.

World Bank (2016) Kenya – Jobs for Youth. Report No. 101685-KE. Social Protection and Labor Global Practice, Africa Region: World Bank Group.

World Bank (2018) World Development Indicators. Available at http://datatopics.worldbank.org/world-development-indicators/.

Zepeda, E., Leigh, F., Ndirangu, L., Omollo, J., and Wainaina, S. (2013) Discussion Paper: Kenya’s Youth Employment Challenge. New York: UNDP.


ANNEX 3LIST OF INTERVIEWEES

43

Name Designation Institution

1 Hon. Novena Ndaliro • Elected Member• Chairperson, Committee on Education (Early Childhood

Development, Baby Care and Cultural Centres)• Chairperson County Assembly Committee Member,

Planning and Finance Committee (LREB)

County Assembly

2 Hon. Nancy Okademi • Nominated Member• Deputy Whip – Majority• Member, Agriculture Committee• Chairman Kenya Young MCAs Association – Busia

Chapter

County Assembly

3 Hon. Obuya • Elected Member• Chairperson Committee for Youth, Sports, Culture,

Gender, Social Services, and Tourism

County Assembly

4 Joy Wanga Chief Officer Department of Youth, Sports, Culture, Gender, Social Services, and Tourism

5 Mr. Moses Weuda Chief Officer Department of Youth, Sports, Culture, Gender, Social Services, and Tourism

6 Mr. Charles Wekesa Ag. County Director for Youth Affairs • State Department for Youth Affairs• Ministry of Public Services, Youth and Gender Affairs

7 Mr. Frank Moturi Agriculture Officer Department of Agriculture

8 Mr. Kennedy Otieno Agriculture Officer Department of Agriculture

9 Focus Group Discussion Civic Educators (CE) • Caroline Mulase, ECD Teacher• Calvin Wanga• Anjeline Apiyo, CE• Edith Kafwa, CE• Francis Namuju, CE • Fredrick Khasiba Etyang, CE• Brian Opemi, CE

Busia County 28 – 30 November 2018

List of Interviewees


1 Mr. Mophat Mandela Youth Advisor Office of the Governor

2 Mr. Robert Mukhanu County Executive Committee Member Ministry of Social Services, Youth and Sports

3 Insert name Youth MCAs Caucus County Assembly

4 Focus group discussion Representatives of youth, women, PWDs and civil society. Small and Medium Businesses

• Daisy Nyongesa • Sandra Misiribil• Doris Matere • Kevin Mahelo• Leyla Muhandale • Jael Mandaji • Linda Aseyo• Evans Asena • Dominic

5 Mr. John Odede County Director (National Government) Ministry of Public Service, Youth and Gender Affairs

6 Ms. Roselyn Masiro Assistant Credit Officer Youth Enterprise Development Fund

7 Insert name Chief Officer Agriculture, Livestock, Cooperatives and Fisheries

Kakamega 3 – 4 November 2018



44


1 Ms. Caroline Nyaseti Chief Officer County Assembly

2 Ms. Margaret Mogeni Chief Officer County Assembly

3 Mr. Robert Ombasa Chief Officer County Assembly

4 Mr. Duke Mainga CEC Department of Youth, Sports, Culture, Gender, Social Services, and Tourism

5 Hon. Eric Janganya Nominated MCA (ODM) Department of Youth, Sports, Culture, Gender, Social Services, and Tourism

6 Hon. Evans Mokoro Chairman • State Department for Youth Affairs• Ministry of Public Services, Youth and Gender Affairs

7 Mr. David Rotich Project Coordinator Department of Agriculture

8 Focus Group Discussion • Moronya Asha Hesborn• Clive Ontita Omosa• Paul Keoga Nyakwara• Callen Kerubo Maranga• Perminus Morara Aguta• Simeka Maroko Polycarp• Ayieko Alfred Omonche• Edna Atambo• Phanice Kwamboka Nyarega• Dennis Orioki• Amisi Oyunge• Abel Ongeri• Felix Orangi

• Gusii Youth Bunge SACCO• Masaba South Youth SACCO• Guyuthe Ltd Company• Gusii Youth Bunge SACCO• Guy Youth• Green Planet Youth Group• Bonchari Youth Forum/Argan Corporation Ltd• CECOME• Ambassadors of Peace Youth Group• Kisii County Youth Development Forum• Armshield International Group• Chairman, National Youth Council• KCYDF/Green Planet Youth Group


1 Mr. John Manyolo and Vera Otieno

Director Strategy and Communications Manager Lake Region Economic Bloc Secretariat

2 Ms. Carol Odera Director Winam Capital

3 Hon. Juddy Ogaga • MCA, Central Kisumu Ward• Chairperson, Committee on Education and

Vocational Training• Member, Budget Committee

County Assembly

4 Mr. Simon Osome Tilla Director of Trade County Government

5 Mr. Thaddeus Ouko Budget Officer Department of Agriculture and Livestock

6 Mr. Tom Kajwang Director for Youth Affairs State Department of Youth Affairs Ministry of Public Service, Gender and Youth Affairs

7 Ms. Miriam Awili Ag Director Industrial Development Department of Business, Energy and Industry

8 Focus Group Discussion George Collins Owuor TEAM

Nick Ondwat KADDNET

Easter Okechi KEFEADO

Stanley Avdi St Stephens

Boniface Ogutu Akach Sitarusha Mawe Tena Peace Campaign

George Kopallah SUGAM

Evans Otieno BAFOPE

Levi Juma Youth Alive! Kenya

Rebecca Atieno Undugu Society of Kenya

Maureen Kemunto TEAM

Kisii County 23 – 27 November 2018

Kisumu County 20 – 22 November 2018



45


1 Mr. Elly Kurgat County Chief Executive Committee Member County Executive

2 Mr. Nelson Ligaga Chief Officer Youth Affairs County Executive

3 Mr. Joshua Kiptoo Speaker County Assembly

4 Focus group discussion • Civil Society Organizations• Faith Based Organizations• Representatives of Youth• Women Representatives• PWDs and Civil Society• Small and Medium Businesses

• Selly C Keino • Diana Jerop Serem • Kirui Victor • Rev. Peter Rono • Jepkosgei Lena • Sharifah Jelagat • Shadrack Tarno • Alex Kimutai • Nicholas Kibett

5 Mr. Alex Otieno County Director of Youth (National Government) Ministry of Public Service, Youth and Gender Affairs

5 Mr. Abdallah Kibet Youth in business /

6 Mr. Pius Ng’eno Youth in agribusiness /

7 Mr. John Tirop Chairman Boda Boda Association of Nandi

8 Mr. Bethwel Kipchirchir Youth representative County Assembly

9 Mr. Felix Magut Youth living with disabilities /

10 Ms. Cynthia Muge Elected Member County Assembly


1 Mr. Walter Okello Chief of Staff County Executive

2 Mr. Jerry William Ochieng

Communication Director County Executive

3 Mr. Peter Otieno Chief Officer Department of Education, Youth, Gender and Social Services

4 Ms. Mary Ocholla County Director of Youth Affairs (National Government) Ministry of Public Service, Youth and Gender Affairs

5 Ms. Sarah Mango Agribusiness Officer County Executive

6 Mr. Bernard Abdallah Nominated Youth Member County Assembly

7 Focus Group Discussion • Youth Representatives• Women Representatives• PWDs and Civil Society• Small Traders

• Enock Omondi • Stephen Obewe • Fred Abayo • Caroline Atieno • Jane Anyango • Evans Oduor • Fredrick Ochieng Opanga

Nandi County 21 – 22 November 2018

Siaya County 27 – 28 November 2018


ANNEX 4TYPOLOGY OF SOLUTIONS TO YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT

46

Intervention area Elements Expected outcomesActive labour market policiesTraining and skills developmentKluve et al., 2017

Trade- or job-specific technical skills: • Business skills training • Literacy and numeracy programmes • Programmes for improving non-technical skills e.g.

behavioural skills, life skills or soft skills of jobseekers. • Back to education initiatives.

1. Increased probability of being employed 2. Shorten job search and duration of unemployment3. Increased probability of retaining job4. Improved quality of employment 5. Increased earnings or consumption6. Increased business performance 7. Increased labour-market participation 8. Better quality of employment 9. Increased returns from employment, including

long-lasting human capital accumulation

Entrepreneurship promotion • Facilitate access to credit • Provide start-up grants and technical support• Fostering micro franchising mechanisms

Employment services • Include: job counselling, job-search assistance, mentoring services

• Accompanied by job placements and technical or financial assistance

Subsidised employment • Wage subsidies and public employment programmes aiming to reduce the labour cost for employers to employ youth

• Provide employment to youth in infrastructure, social development and community projects

• Reduce financial costs or risks associated with low productivity

• Include fiscal stimuli to employers like waiving of employers’ national insurance contributions

Macroeconomic policies: Fiscal and sectoral policies Fiscal policySource: O’Higgins and Moscariello, 2017

• Countercyclical expansionary fiscal policy to stimulate GDP growth

• Reduced budget surplus fiscal expansion based on increased government investment expenditure and reduced taxation during recession and the opposite when the economy is expanding

1. Increased GDP growth results2. More jobs created3. By extension more jobs available for youth4. Decreased youth unemployment

Sectoral developmentSource: O’Higgins and Moscariello, 2017

• Agriculture: increase agricultural production and productivity; include large-scale commercial farming on uncultivated land

• Increase land and labour productivity and expansion of cultivated land

• Accompanied by improving domestic value chains • Industry: increase industrial production • Increase quality and quantity of output/production • But should not be restricted to these sectors

1. Greater agricultural productivity is associated with increased youth employment and reduced unemployment

2. Increased productivity (both quantity and quality) leads to higher income which increases economic activity

Labour market institutions (note the literature here is focused largely on high income countries as there is little from LMICs so we might not use this section) Source: O’Higgins and Moscariello, 2017

• Raising or reducing minimum wage• Employment protection • Collective bargaining (e.g. through trade unions)

1. Findings suggest no statistically significant correlation with youth employment outcomes

2. Collective bargaining minimises negative effects on youth employment effects of minimum wage increase/decrease

3. Min wage works well for improving youth employment outcomes where there are strong labour market institutions

Employability: education, training and skills, and the school-to-work transitionFormal education • Curricula reform and teacher training programmes

• Teacher incentives • Institutional management and capacity building

1. Improved quality education 2. Improved education outcomes 3. Improved qualification for job market 4. Increased youth participation in labour market 5. Increase youth employment 6. Increased income and consumption

Extracurricular activities • Career counselling, job fairs, student associations

Pedagogy • Learner-centred teaching; experiential and participatory learning

Skills training2 Source: Rankin et al., 2015

• Transferable skills training• TVET• Foundational skills training• Work placements (matching, community services,

military service)

2. This refers to training and skills delivered within the formal education system unlike the skills training discussed in the active labour market policies which is outside the formal education system (Kluve et al., 2017)


ANNEX 4TYPOLOGY OF SOLUTIONS TO YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT

47

Intervention area Elements Expected outcomes

Alternative learning pathwaysSource: Rankin et al., 2015

• Media and edutainment• Entoring, tutoring or coaching• Peer-to-peer learning• Distance learning (MOOCs)Parent and family

involvement• Community centres and civil society groups

Financial support Source: Rankin et al., 2015

• Education-related financial support services• Job-related financial support services

1. Increased access to education and job services for youth

2. Increased use of education and job services among youth

3. Increased probability of youth employment

Youth entrepreneurship and self-employmentYouth entrepreneurship Source: OECD, 2017

• Improving access to finance• Enhancing entrepreneurship training• Supporting business development services• Promoting the formalisation of businesses

1. Youth start business2. Youth businesses are more likely to be successful


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