The Japanese call them freeters, which a journalist for the United Kingdom’s Independent newspaper recently reported is an amalgamation of ‘freelance’ and arbeiter, the German word for workers. In Tunisia, where the Arab Spring was set off by one of them setting themselves ablaze in frustration, they are hittistes, Arabic slang for “people who lean against walls”. The British call theirs NEETs (youth not in education, employment or training).
In Kenya, though, we know them simply as ‘ma-sufferers’, a growing and increasingly hopeless army of unemployed youth. Thanks to a period of jobless growth, the world faces a growing number of young people that have the potential to cause significant social disruption if their needs are not met. The problem is particularly acute in developing countries like Kenya, where our investigations have revealed there are as many as ten million unemployed youth. This army grows by the hundreds of thousands each year. Of these, as many as 60,000 are university graduates who, unfortunately are not much more likely to get a job than their less educated peers. Indeed, the frustrations of being in the same boat are harder borne by the educated whose hopes are crushed by years of failure.
Beginning today, The Standard newspapers will pursue a fresh campaign on youth unemployment and crime, fashioned along the same lines as the one on patient safety that recently spurred doctors and hospitals into action. We believe that the issues involved in this challenge are certainly more urgent, a fact that all political players are alive to, as was demonstrated by their promises in the recent electoral contest to replace President Mwai Kibaki. The facts and the stories behind them, however, bear exposure because the ugly truth hidden therein has been ignored far too long. Kenya is headed for a major social catastrophe in the next one decade if nothing is done.
There are those who might think this statement is alarmist or exaggerated. They would not be more wrong. The numbers involved and the inexorable march of time will make it so. And there is already evidence of the problem in parts of the country such as Central Kenya where, thanks to an earlier boom in population figures, the ‘youth bulge’ warned of by demographists is maturing. Faced with mass unemployment and the resultant frustration, large parts of an entire generation are now lost to dissipation and crime. This, our investigations reveal, is the shocking future awaiting communities in other parts of the country where the largest section of the ‘youth bulge’ is still about a decade away from completing its education entering the workforce.
Ten million adults are out of work, a growing number of them youth under 25. Researchers say this number is expected to keep growing and reach a peak nationally in about ten years time. Social scientists warn that this “youth bulge”, the huge number of people nearing adulthood notable in demographic charts, presents the biggest hurdle in tackling violent crime. Church leaders say this “demographic trap” could see “more crime, militant gangs, terrorism, labour unrest and political violence” among other social ills.
Researchers who have studied crime statistics in Kenya say a person aged between 16 and 25 years commits one in every two crimes reported to police. In the 2007 to 2008 fiscal year, some 89,770 crimes were reported. Out of these, 48,710 (54 per cent) were committed by youth in that age bracket. Police reports also show involvement in violent crime by youth just entering their teens. Earlier this year, a boy of 14 was shot dead over a violent mugging in Nairobi. Our inquiries in the neighbourhood after the killing suggested the involvement of teens in violent crime is no longer unusual.
Is this not the trend that was seen in the rise of Mungiki in Central Kenya, with younger and younger boys drawn to its apparently “easy life” of extortion and other crimes? Is it not a trend showing itself in the frustrated lives of other youth across the country where elder murders to obtain access to land, the main factor of production in rural areas, are increasingly common? When large enough numbers of such desperate youth are found in all parts of the republic — a likely scenario when Kenya hits 60 million people in 2030 – these will be insurmountable problems. The only way to head them off is to address them now with real solutions to unemployment.
