Youth bulge: A demographic time bomb or blessing?

By WINSLEY MASESE

About 43 per cent of Kenya’s population is aged 15 and below – an astounding average that reveals that one in two Kenyans fall under this grouping.

The good news is that this group is the most mobile, flexible and easiest to teach new skills, inculcate positive mind sets and habits. However, the bad news is that if Kenya does not harness their potential, the country could face a future of stunted economic growth and a high dependency ratio.

Justin Yifu Lin, a former World Bank economist and senior vice-president also warns that failure to nurture youthful population poses risks of insecurity and political instability.

 “If a large cohort of young people cannot find employment and earn satisfactory income, the youth bulge will become a demographic bomb, because a large mass of frustrated youth is likely to become a potential source of social and political instability,” explained Lin.

It’s estimated that more than a million of the nearly seven million Kenyan youth aged between 20 and 29 are unemployed. They are joined annually by about 450,000 others graduating from secondary and tertiary institutions.

Despite these growing numbers, the ratio of new formal sector jobs to the number of graduates is in the ratio of 1:5, suggesting that the economy does not create adequate decent jobs for a majority of job seekers. The situation in Kenya is similar to China’s — and a lot of Asia — in the early 1990s, when the youth formed the majority of the population.

 However, it is this cheap and young labour force that gave China its reputation as the manufacturing capital of the world. Asian countries were able to transform this demographic advantage by massively investing in education, family planning and job creation.

Growth contribution

Economic analysts attributed to this demographic advantage to a third of the economic growth registered by these East and Southeast Asia countries.

But even so, the demographic dividend is dependent on social and economic policies that promote open trade, flexible labour markets and investments in human capital, including education and public health.

Economists debate whether Kenya’s burgeoning youth population will be a burden or advantage to the country. It’s strongly believed that such a large number of young people brings with it enormous opportunity for growth through new ideas, and a sufficiently work force to power these ideas.

Kenya’s youth bulge has the potential to increase economic growth and living standards, and help realise the Government’s goal of greater economic diversification.

However, Onsomu, a policy analyst and acting head of social sector at the Kenya Institute of Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA) reckons that equipping the youth with effective education and training is critical to ensuring the youth bulge becomes an asset — and not a liability.

Education and training needs, she notes, must focus on preparing the youth for the workforce.

Local employers believe that the education system does not always prepare school and university leavers with essential employability skills

Over the past one decade, the issue of youth employment has gained growing prominence as key agenda of the government. Several policies, programmes and initiatives have been launched to address this challenge.

However, these policies, programmes and initiatives, though laudable, may not achieve the desired results.

Technical skills

The rate of unemployment for youth remains higher than of other age groups in Kenya. This is not because they don’t have the motivation, the ambition or the energy, but the real barriers facing unemployed young people are inexperience and a lack of specific employment skills. But that cycle of “no job, no experience, no experience, and no job” can be broken with appropriate government and private sector interventions and society contribution.

 “The ability of Kenya achieving the second phase of Medium Term Plan 2, as envisaged in Vision 2030 needs a lot of investment on the youth development, hence the need to provide basic education and the right technical skills,” reckons Onsomu.

Consequently, this, she says, will open the doors for skill upgrade, higher education and growth in high value employment.

“The country must invest in basic education and skill development and lack of it would see persistent poverty cycle,” she noted. Without formal education and provision of health care, she says, the country risks not having quality human capital.

She reckons that expansion of technical colleges plays a key role towards this end by offering technical skills that the country badly needs to achieve Vision 2030.

“We should also invest in tertiary institutes so that those who do not manage to proceed to go to university can gain life skills, such as entrepreneurship,” she says.

Evans Gor Semelang’o, Chairman of the Youth Enterprise Development Fund supports this view. “We are working towards inculcating entrepreneurship in our education system to enable the youth explore their own ways of creating employment and wealth.”

For those unable to proceed to higher levels of education such as secondary, Semelang’o advises the need for another level of intervention.

Education investment

However, for an all-inclusive participation, those who drop out of school also need training, notably on agribusiness so to make them equally productive.

Winnie Cherotich, a programme officer at Uwezo Kenya — an organisation that aims to improve literacy and numeracy skills among Kenyan, Ugandan and Tanzanian children aged above six — underscores the need for governments to get their education investment right to reap the dividends of its demographics.

“It’s the role of all stakeholders to lay a proper foundation for the child to get the right education in the formative years,” she said. This, she said, would ensure that their intellectual attitudes and values are well grounded and would encourage a flow of information and ideas.

Kithinji Kiragu, an economics development expert, agrees with Cherotich, saying education is a critical tool in securing the country’s future.

“We cannot create an enabling environment for those who are below 15 years to drive the country’s economic agenda if we cannot solve the current problems facing the youth,” he said. “We need to direct resources towards improving polytechnics to be able to equip young people with technical skills.”

In an article titled “Africa’s Youthful Population: Risk or Opportunity”, Lori Ashford, then of the Population Reference Bureau, wrote: “Africa’s young people will be the driving force behind economic prosperity in future decades, but only if policies and programmes are in place to realise their potentials.”

Development experts have described the youth bulge as an important demographic phenomenon in sub-Saharan African countries for the coming decades.

It is expected India will in a decade overtake China’s population of 1.33 billion. Currently, more than half of India’s population is under the age of 25, with 65 per cent of the population under 35.

By 2020, India’s average age will be 29, in comparison to 37 in China and 45 in the US and Western Europe and Japan 48.

IMF projects

This demographic trend will confer a significant competitive advantage upon India, which is expected to host about a quarter of the global increase in the working age population (ages 15-64) until 2040. As a result the IMF projects that India’s demographic dividend has the potential to produce an additional two per cent per capita GDP growth each year for the next 20 years.

South Africa

South Africa is the first sub-Saharan country to enter into youth bulge. However, the National Youth Policy (NYP) 2009 – 2014 forms part of a global trend where governments are formulating youth policies that respond to the changing conditions of young people in the 21st century.

Arab Spring

Dejected and disillusioned, Mohamed Bouzazi set himself on fire for failure to secure gainful employment, triggering a mass protest in Tunisia.

The end result was the ousting of President El Abidine Ben Ali as the protests quickly spread to neighbouring countries, becoming an Arab Spring. Egypt has not regained so is Syria.

By and large, Arab revolutions had a clear economic underpinning: they were fuelled by poverty, unemployment, and lack of economic opportunity. At the heart of these uprisings is a search for social and economic justice.