Youth need time to sharpen their skills

By Henry Munene

It is sad that every time a prominent person dies, a youthful girl pops up to claim that ‘the late was my child’s father’

The story is told of a Tanzanian artiste who had flown to Kenya to launch his ‘new’ song.  He was ferried to his hotel by a typically garrulous taxi driver.

“Would you like to listen to some bongo music?” the taxi man offered. “Sure,” went the musician, pleasantly surprised by the gesture of hospitality in a country famed for its stereotypical lack of decorum.

Now, when the music started playing, the musician’s face contorted into bewildered look.

 “Where did you get that song?” asked the bongo artiste. “It’s what I am in Nairobi to launch!”

The driver burst out laughing. To him, it was an old tune that was even out of the Nairobi charts.

The scenario above captures the complex problem of piracy in Nairobi. Everything from investigative TV exposes, through the royal wedding, the killing of Osama Bin Laden to the inauguration of President Uhuru Kenyatta, was converted in record time into sellable DVDs and hawked by industrious youths even in bars.

Indeed, a few minutes after the Supreme Court’s ruling, I bumped into a smiling hawker who implored, “Buda! Boss, buy a DVD of the Supreme Court’s hearings, complete with today’s ruling.”

Of course this piracy is illegal, but many youths have nonetheless gone ahead to convert it into a multimillion industry, presumably for lack of something better to do.

Indeed, before the arrival of the Music Copyright Society of Kenya (MCSK), the pirates reproduced every popular video on cheap DVDs mainly from China.   Now, the MCSK has limited the piracy to music and videos produced outside Kenya, as they levy a fee on anyone profiting from Kenyan productions, and distribute the cash as royalties among all registered artistes.

Other than piracy, this illegal DVD trade illustrates the entrepreneurial spirit among the youth that has refused to be crushed by the runaway joblessness the youth find themselves in. And while I am not for even a single moment going to justify piracy, I must say it attests to the fact that even as we continue to dole out plum public sector jobs to people who should be sitting under the eaves of their upcountry houses watching the beauty of sunset, the ghost that haunts this country will not be laid to rest until we genuinely help the youth exercise their potential in leadership and business.

It is sad that every time a prominent person dies, a youthful girl pops up to claim that ‘the late was my child’s father’. If not that, sons and daughters are left hacking one another with machetes over property, because their eighteen-till-I-die father (rarely mother) did not want to involve them in business or even give an indication that they would ever inherit his wealth.

At the national level, we need to include the youth even in parastatal board jobs, which have over the years been little more than old people’s homes. We also need to go beyond lip service to repeal the law to stop dreamy-eyed procurement officers from asking the youth: “Do you have any experience servicing tenders, young man.”

We should let the youth get a piece of the multibillion State tender business that for eons has been dominated by well-connected octogenarian billionaires, who, by the way, stifle progress by bankrolling crooked leaders’ campaigns in exchange for contracts to supply ‘air’ and kickbacks.

Everywhere you look, the operational mantra seems to be ‘Kazi kwa vijana, mali kwa wazee’ (work for the youth, cash for the elderly).

The irony of it all is that we blame the youth for being lazy, and for idling (kuregarega) and drowning in cheap illicit brews.

Yet for us to achieve the ambitious goals we have set for ourselves, we need the kind of virility and techno-savvy aptitude the modern youth epitomise.

The writer is Revise Editor for County Weekly