Al Kags

It turns out that Sonia and I are having a discussion on our blogs about Youth Development in Kenya – is the funding available appropriately used, are the designs of the programmes that are meant to support young people’s development appropriately designed, do we have an appropriately framed National Youth policy and more importantly, are we actually preparing our young people to have a good shot at life – including taking leadership and being the change we all want to see?

In her most recent blog post, Sonia says that her musings are based on her own experience in (and I add here, considerable knowledge gained from) her work as an intern in a youth organisation, and the work that she has been doing in the non-profit world, specifically regarding youth development. She notes that the experiences allowed her to engage with citizens of note who not only had successful careers, but also worked to ensure that, “young people were good to drive development not just as labourers but eventually as owners of production, innovators of products and services, creators of wealth and employment.”

But having said that she was inclined to disagree with my conclusion after reading through the Kenyan National Youth Policy, which you can read here in full, but which in a nutshell was that young people are meant to “only participate in community and civic affairs – and therefore they are not to innovate or drive Kenya’s position into the future global dynamic. Further, the design of youth programmes can be construed as per the policy to mean that the programmes are to be focused on youth activities and not in organising youth as a factor of competitiveness.”

Her reasons (and my responses to them) are as follows:-

SONIA: The national youth policy was the result of a (7 year) open and consultative process, in which the young people who mainly participated “were largely those out of school, involved in community development initiatives through local organizations. Few, if any, were entrepreneurs or were innovators”

How then do we suggest that the policy is sound? I dare Sonia to show me one country that has achieved a strong level of success in the global environment without the process of development being driven by the economy – hence entrepreneurs and innovators. It is this group that blazes the trail and creates wealth and employment – which in turn has a real lasting social impact.

SONIA: Kenya does not generally organise for competitiveness (but) “The consultative process of developing the National Youth Policy awakened policy makers to the “small man” and a national agenda to support “jua kali” that is mostly young people. And in doing so legislated the Micro Finance Act and the Youth Enterprise Development Fund (no matter the criticism against it) to organize entrepreneurs for competitiveness.”

Ok. There are two issues here. First, there is the statement that Kenya doesn’t generally organise for competitiveness and here I generally agree. It is where the fundamental problem lies! We live in a global village in which there are scarce resources that can only be taken advantage of by the most organised groups – countries included. If the objective is not competitiveness on a global scale, then we are wasting our time.

The second part of the statement is a full contradiction of the above. We must understand competitiveness to organise for it. The definition of competitiveness that I subscribe to the most is the development of the “thing” or “set of things” that we (Kenyans) can claim to take the first, best, only, most… etc. position in on a global scale. There is a deeper discussion on National Competitiveness on Wikipedia. It is where we take a critical look at our region and the world around us and agree that Kenya is the place that the rest of the world can come to when they want “this thing”. And then we organise ourselves to become truly global leaders in it.

To wit, China has excelled in mass manufacturing, Dubai leads the world in trade, the UK is a world leader for Organised Soccer and so on.

As per its objective, the National Youth Policy has helped to organise young people to participate in civic and social areas (all which are important) but we must be clear that the express intention is enabling young people to stay out of trouble and not to prepare them to create wealth and employment. Certainly, not to make Kenya the competitive country it wants to be by the year 2030.

For me, that Jua Kali is considered an avenue for entrepreneurship is farcical. As Ken Opalo says in his January 6^th his blog post, there is much to be said for the economies of scale and Research and Development in true entrepreneurship.

I daresay, the same is true for the civic organisations that are spending inordinate amounts of money on young people – including the “enterprise development programmes”. Until the ultimate objective is competitiveness, we shall remain like rats on a wheel.