Coming Together to Eradicate Unemployment in Kenya

One of the problems we struggle with most in Kenya is unemployment, and perhaps the solution lies in rethinking the way we manage our human capital.?

Human capital refers to the resources associated with the skills and knowledge of individuals—it’s a crucial determinant in the success of individuals, companies, and nations.?

At the individual level, the more skills and knowledge you have, the higher you’re paid. The typical medical doctor takes about a decade to accumulate the required skills and knowledge, making their human capital value extremely high. When they finally start working, they’re compensated accordingly: with six-figure salaries.?

At the company level, industry leaders like Microsoft, Safaricom, and Apple go to great lengths to attract and retain the cream of talent in their industries. It’s not unusual for a company like Microsoft to acquire a startup simply to recruit exceptional talent. They know they need the best people to remain at the top.?

And at the national level, the countries that have maximized the human capital potential of most of their population have the highest living standards. Such countries include Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Japan.?

Kenya could do better in the development and utilization of our human capital. And there’s immense incentive for us to do better. Our economy is struggling, with many citizens struggling to meet basic needs like food, health, and quality education.?

There’s massive opportunity for growth in human capital development at multiple levels of the country’s human resource value chain. In this article, I’ll highlight the opportunities in three key areas:?

1. Empowering individuals to make career choices that are better aligned with their skills and attributes.?
2. Bridging the disconnect between graduates' skills and industry needs.?
3. Reskilling to keep up with the ongoing technological disruption in the labor market.?

In the sections below, I’ll explain the opportunities and suggest how different stakeholders can take advantage. I’ll show how to use these opportunities to improve your value as an employee or enhance your organization’s resilience as a decision-maker.?

I’ll also explore ways community service organizations like Rotaract can help and share initiatives that the Rotaract Club of Naivasha is undertaking in this area.?

Empowering Individuals to Make Better Career Choices

This fact seems so obvious that it’s baffling how we manage to disregard it when making career choices: People are suited for different jobs.?

For example, I love ideas, and I have high linguistic intelligence. Because I love processing ideas, I excel at aggregating knowledge from different sources and structuring it in service of a goal—which is what article writing is all about. And I’m good at languages, which allows me to communicate ideas effectively.?

Naturally social and chatty individuals are likely to have successful careers in customer service, reception, or sales.?

Similarly, those who love working with numbers make great accountants.?

The problem is that in Kenya, most people don’t consider individual attributes and how they relate to potential careers when choosing a career. And where this consideration is made, it’s not structured, meaning it’s not as effective as it should be.?

Our system of choosing careers has two huge faults:?

• There’s inadequate awareness of career options. When most Kenyans are making career choices, they’re only aware of a few major careers like teaching, law, medicine, and engineering. So we choose from this limited basket while there are dozens and possibly hundreds of careers we know nothing about.?
• We’re subjective when choosing careers. Many of us choose careers because they’re cool, fashionable, or are said to have a lot of money—this is baked into our culture. We don’t stop to consider how suited we are to potential careers. We forget that suitability increases the likelihood of excellence, which is often a bigger determinant of earnings than the industry you’re in.?

Career Coaches Can Help, But We’re Not Using Them?

A competent career coach can help overcome the above challenges. A suitable one should have extensive knowledge of the job market. They can then work with you to objectively assess your attributes and skills and match you to a suitable set of careers.?

The irony is: the people who most need career coaches can’t afford them. This group includes individuals without tertiary education who’d benefit greatly from having their attributes and work experience matched to a suitable career. They’d also benefit from professional advice on how to improve their employability.?

And some who can afford career coaches don’t appreciate the need for their services—they’re probably not even aware of the existence of such a service.?

Opportunity: Community service organizations like Rotaract can come in by organizing for individuals whose human capital is most underutilized to have free consultations with competent career coaches.?

Such an initiative has the potential to be life-changing. Unsurprisingly, communities with high ratios of under-utilized human capital are the ones that struggle to afford food, healthcare, education, and other basic needs.?

Corporations can also take this challenge on as part of CSR efforts. The impact would be monumental.?

Proper Career Guidance in Secondary Schools Is Critical?

Once you choose a degree after secondary school, you’re virtually locked into your chosen career: It’s difficult to become a doctor after taking five years of your life to get a degree in architecture.?

So it is that most Kenyans make the most important decision in their professional lives in secondary school, at a time when they are the least equipped to do it.?

It’s disastrous.?

I received no career guidance at all over the four years I spent in secondary school. But I had to choose which degree to take immediately after finishing. At that time, my exposure to potential careers was minimal.

I work as an article writer and editor for websites. This job existed back then, but I didn’t know.?

I won’t say that I wasted four years getting a degree I don’t use in my work, but I wish my slot had gone to someone more suitable. I feel like I misused my government’s and parents’ resources for four years. And I feel like someone deserving missed out on a career because I took their university slot.?

That is how much of a mess the Kenyan human capital system is.?

The Rotaract Club of Naivasha, through our Young Generations docket, runs career guidance programs in multiple secondary schools in Naivasha. We gather as many professionals as we can and organize interactive sessions with the students. This exposes them to different careers and helps them know the skills and attributes each career requires.?

We also hold an annual intensive career guidance day dubbed Rotacare, where we assemble students for a full day of career guidance and mentorship. We target underserved communities, and this year, we’ll be at the Moi Ndabi Secondary School in Maiella.?

Opportunity: One way to maximize the impact of such career guidance efforts would be to assemble a database with all careers and make it accessible to students. It could be done through a website that lists the skills necessary for each career. If possible, there could even be a system to analyze individuals' skills and match them to a set of careers.?

Matching individuals to careers they’re suited for is the first step. What comes next is equipping them with the right skills.?

Bridging the Disconnect Between Graduates’ Skills and Industry Needs?

After graduating, my first job was in a ceramic tile factory. I had a degree and skills I’d accumulated in writing and communication, but I later learned that they didn’t hire me for any of that.?

They hired me for my ability to learn.?

The plan was to take me through a paid internship that taught me all the skills I needed to work in a department of the tile-manufacturing factory.?

I quit before the end of the internship, but had I stayed, the company would have gotten an adequately-skilled employee, and I’d have gotten into a career that had nothing to do with the four-year course I took in university.?

While such a strategy highlights the inefficiency of Kenya’s human capital system, it’s a sound strategy for companies that otherwise wouldn’t have anyone to employ in a country full of unemployed graduates.?

Many new buildings in the country are tiled, yet no tertiary institution teaches tile-making technology—none that I know of.?

The same applies to smartphones. Everyone uses them, but no institution I know of teaches how to repair them. If your phone is damaged, there’s a good chance the repairman you find will do more harm than good to the phone because they have half-baked, self-taught skills.?

It’s like we deliberately avoid teaching useful skills. I’ve just explained how critical career coaches are to any economy. Yet I’ve never seen a career coaching course anywhere in Kenya.?

Similarly, the skills I use to write articles aren’t taught by any tertiary institution in the country. I had to learn them from multiple sources over the years, and from experience.?

In an age where everyone uses Google to find information, article writing is a huge global industry with millions of jobs.?

But our people can’t take advantage of these jobs because none of our institutions are teaching these skills.?

In the same vein, YouTube has probably minted more global millionaires than there are millionaires in Kenya. There’s a science to earning from YouTube. We’re waiting for each Kenyan content creator to discover it through trial and error.?

Opportunity: Investors could set up institutions that teach the skills needed in today’s market. For example, thanks to technology like the internet, there are dozens of new jobs accessible to Kenyans that didn’t exist a decade ago. A school that teaches such skills would help people get good jobs and is likely to be a lucrative venture.?

Since our education system is largely incapable of equipping individuals with useful skills, the only recourse is work experience.?

As a graduate, accept that if you’re to be judged by your education alone, you’ll probably remain unemployable for the rest of your life and will be lucky to ever get a job.?

The solution is to gain relevant work experience by any means necessary. If this means an unpaid internship or volunteer work, so be it. Without such measures, don’t be surprised if you wear out your shoes tarmacking.?

Opportunity: Rotaract clubs can help their members by building structures that maximize the impact of volunteer experience on employability. Volunteering can help impart useful general skills like teamwork and problem-solving. But it can also give role-specific skills if structured well. For example, a volunteer can go through a structured program to learn marketable fundraising skills like proposal and grant writing.?

Now, even when we’ve matched individuals to the right careers and given them proper training, there’s still another problem. Jobs are constantly being rendered redundant by technology such as AI.?

Reskilling to Adapt to the Ongoing Technological Disruption in the Labor Market?

Technology is growing faster than ever. The wide adoption of computers, increased automation in factories, and the rise of artificial intelligence have taken away numerous jobs.?

But what we need to focus on is that as technology makes some roles redundant, it creates others.?

In some cases, technology only changes the nature of jobs. For example, accountants existed before computers, and they’re still around. During the transition to computerized systems, the accountant who preserved their employability was the one who learned how to use software like Excel and Quickbooks.?

The days when you would go to school, join the job market, acquire some skills, and use them for the rest of your career are gone.?

Savvy organizations know this and take it upon themselves to regularly train their employees to ensure their skills are up to date.?

Smart individuals also know this and are always learning the latest skills.?

The problem is that it’s not always easy for individuals to upskill and reskill. One of the most significant barriers is insufficient awareness of career options. There could be a radio presenter who was laid off, and they don’t know that they can use their golden voice to create voice-overs for clients in the US.?

There could also be a secretary who’s uncertain about the future of their career and they don’t know their skills and experience could come in handy as a virtual assistant for clients from across the globe.?

Again, organizations like Rotaract can come in handy here through initiatives that:?

• Create awareness about career options.?
• Make it easy and affordable for individuals to learn new skills.?

Trade unions also have a duty to help their members upskill and stay relevant in the job market. Any trade union worth its salt can’t stand by as its members get sacked for being redundant, yet intervening was possible.?

On 15th April 2023, The Rotaract Club of Naivasha will hold the fifth edition of our annual ATCUP event for young professionals. Among the things attendees will learn is how to stay relevant in today’s ever-changing job market. Don’t miss out

The TakeAway

It’s not by accident that Kenya’s economy is lagging, and our unemployment rate is through the roof. We are the architects of our situation.?

The good thing is that there are numerous opportunities for us to do better. If we grab them, things will change for the better.?

Other African countries are rich in resources like gold, diamond, and oil. We are not.?

Our biggest resource is our people; we can’t afford to mess up our human capital development and utilization.?

Do your part, and your country will be better for it. And as usual, let the Rotary Four-Way Test guide you.?

Of the things you think, say, or do:?

1. Is it the truth??
2. Is it fair to all concerned??
3. Will it build goodwill and better friendships??
4. Is it beneficial to all concerned??

The Rotaract Club of Naivasha is committed to impacting positive change in our community in the areas I’ve discussed in this article. If you’d like to partner with us, contact Caleb, our club president, at +254 708 141 128.?