Educate youth for brighter future

The future of any country lies in the young shoulders of its youth. This is particularly true of African countries where at least 200 million Africans are aged between 15 and 24. By 2020, three out of four Africans will average 20 years old. It's no wonder that by end of the century 40 per cent of all humans will be African. Like other countries, Kenya's population is youthful.

Kenya's youth swelling can, however, explode into disquiet if their plight is not urgently and strategically addressed. Specialised training and higher education are the two areas where youth potential in enabling sustainable growth can be duly harnessed. For this to be done, it is important to step back in time and appreciate the immense challenges they face in these two areas.

In 2008, 100,649 young Kenyans were privileged to secure highly competitive university slots. That year, those who were fighting for university placements were nearly one million. For four years, they had burnt the midnight oil in 6,566 secondary schools and managed to get the strong Bs and As that would propel them to universities.

Although more than half a million youngsters had worked hard and scored well, Kenya's seven public universities then and 24 constituent colleges could only manage to enroll 100,649, less than ten per cent of all the students who sat for the exams.

The situation was not much different four years later in 2012. More than one million Form 4 students in 8,197 secondary schools sat for KCSE. Only 195,528 were selected to join public universities with 45,023 joining private universities. A small percentage of the remaining one million joined the registered 813 technical institutions.

But many more had reached the end of their educational road joining millions of other young people and together comprise Kenya's unfortunate statistic of eight million jobless youth.

This August, hundreds of thousands of young people are in the home stretch of their secondary education hoping to score highly in KCSE so that they can secure those coveted university slots. After four years in university, they will then hope to secure increasingly elusive jobs.

Kenya's leaders, parents and youth alike must realise that the journey is just as important as the destination. The educational journey of our young people must equip them with practical skills, experiential learning and leadership skills that transcend exam results. For this to happen, youth must use formal lessons and holidays to learn, dream, innovate, initiate and participate. Schools, colleges and parents must deliberately facilitate and not choke such youth action.

On their part, leaders must enact and implement policies that will empower youth to do these things. Blame-games aside, we must now move from plan to action to equip the youth to eventually lead the country to a better and greener tomorrow.