If I made a shilling each time I heard a seasoned employed professional advise unemployed youths to be entrepreneurs or to seek out technical skills, I would be a millionaire. Do not get me wrong it is good to seek out other alternatives if all else fails, however, the Kenyan policymakers have whitewashed the conversations on unemployment in the country. Each year, the country is churning out thousands of graduates to the job industry which cannot accommodate them.
Last week, Citizen TV ran a feature on a first-class graduate with a degree in actuarial science who lives on the streets. The story received mixed reactions both offline and online, some people accused the young man of being lazy. Which brought flashbacks of when I was a job seeker. I would run into some of my friend’s parents who would ask me,
“ What are you up to know?”
Of course, this question was to gauge if I was working or not. I would respond that I am searching for a job to which they would tell me that I am not trying hard enough to secure a hustle or a job. My relatives, on the other hand, would ask me, “ Why don’t you just start a business?”. They had zero knowledge of the struggle I was going through, I even set up a job matrix to keep track of all the applications I had sent out, as well as working pro-bono at my aunt's boutique to ensure I did not go mad staying home already beating myself up for not having the right connections or being usefully enough for the job market.
At some point, I was like maybe I should have done a course in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), which would have made me more favourable for the job market. However, every time I opened the #IkoKazi hashtag it reminded me that even the graduates who did STEM courses were still job hunting. Some job seekers have gone to the streets with placards outlining their qualifications, in the hopes of bumping into someone who will have an opportunity for them. Others have used social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to seek out opportunities because they have run out of other options.
In reality, the unemployment crisis in the country is a ticking time bomb. So many job seekers are at the brink of giving up and others have already given up. A look at the headlines will show you that policymakers are not interested in seeking out solutions but more into bashing job seekers or generating more entrepreneur opportunities. Just the other day the minister of education called job seekers stupid for not being plumbers, due to a shortage of plumbers in his home area.
The constant bashing of job seekers needs to stop, this is because it will not create more jobs or solve the unemployment issue in the country.
Pushing unemployed youths to be entrepreneurs or to gain technical skills will also not solve the issue. We cannot all aspire to be entrepreneurs, especially when the problem of the unemployment crisis in the country is bigger than laziness and more on the structural failure of the system. Therefore, when policymakers address the issue of unemployment through the angle of structural failures then we will start having tangible solutions to reduce joblessness in the country.
