World Bank approves Sh15b grant for Kenyan youth

About 280,000 Kenyan youth will benefit from a Sh15 billion grant by the World Bank to support an internship programme.

The institution approved the grant on Sunday to fund a five-year programme, which is projected to enhance the skills of young, unemployed university graduates by preparing them for the job market or to run their own businesses.

Beneficiaries of the new programme are youth aged between 18 and 29.

“In all our conversations with the youth, with Government, NGOs, and the private sector, one thing is clear: together we have to do more to create sufficient jobs and ensure that young people are adequately prepared to step into these jobs,” said Diarietou Gaye, World Bank’s country director for Kenya.

“That’s exactly why we have approved this large investment, as a vote of confidence in Kenya and its young people.”

Labour market

The programme focuses on improving youth employability through training, supporting self-employment in new business start-ups, improving labour market information, and strengthening public policy relating to the youth.

Youth under 25 account for the largest number of the unemployed, and those without an advanced education have poor employment prospects and a higher incidence of low-productivity, low-paying jobs.

“This project can help the employment prospects of youth, beginning with the large numbers who have started their own business or are employed in informal sector enterprises,” said Cornelia Tesliuc, the bank’s senior social development specialist and task team leader.

After the approval of the funding was given, the project is scheduled to start in July 2016.

Of the total grant, Sh7.5 billion will be disbursed to cater for both formal and informal sectors to scale up the Kenya Youth Employment Programme (KYEP).

To help create jobs, the World Bank has budgeted Sh4.15 billion to upscale self-employment through supporting start-ups, existing businesses and innovations to reach hard-to-serve youth.

A further Sh1.35 billion will go towards labour market information systems, and Sh2 billion to capacity building for youth policy development, monitoring and evaluation.

To gauge the project’s success, 70 per cent of youth who would have received training should have found a job or become self-employed at least six months later.

Cost savings

It would be the second phase of the project, whose first phase the World Bank rated as “highly satisfactory” in its review.

“The component has been able to exceed its targets for training by virtue of the additional funding received at the time of the restructuring, and cost savings achieved during implementation because of lower unit costs for training than anticipated at the design stage,” the bank said.

The original target of 10,000 youth participating in the training and internships has been exceeded, as has the number of weeks of training and internship.

However, 86 per cent of the youth who started the internship programme completed the training, which was below the target of 95 per cent.