Why Kenya's 'A' students are failing in the school of life

Kenya's universities produce over a million graduates annually, but formal jobs absorb only a fraction. [File, Standard]

Kenya created 822,100 new jobs in 2025, according to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), yet most graduates continue to enter an economy that absorbs them unevenly, with nearly nine in 10 of those jobs in the informal sector.

The data points to a widening gap between education outcomes and labour market absorption, where academic achievement does not automatically translate into stable employment.

The share of Kenya's formal employment has fallen from 18.5 per cent in 2010 to 15.5 per cent in 2024, a structural retreat that is eroding the promise that a degree once carried.

Kenya's youth unemployment rate stood at 11.9 per cent in 2024, while the World Bank estimates that nearly 75 per cent of Kenyans under 35 face limited access to meaningful job opportunities.

Research published in the International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science found that 65 per cent of Kenyan graduates were in employment that did not match their level of education, while 35 per cent remained unemployed altogether, evidence that the problem is as much about job quality as job quantity.

Kenya and much of Africa have built institutions that identify and celebrate promise but lack structures to sustain it after graduation.

The systems that support talent inside schools, including deadlines, mentors, competitions and recognition frameworks, weaken once students leave, abandoning young people to navigate an unstructured labour market alone.

A 2020 Brookings Institution study described Africa's youth employment crisis not as a shortage of jobseekers but as a "missing jobs" crisis, a structural deficit of formal, well-paying work.

The World Bank's Africa's Pulse report for 2025 estimates that Sub-Saharan Africa must create 25 million new jobs annually over the next quarter-century to keep pace with its growing labour force.

Outside school, economic pressure often replaces exploration, with survival competing against self-expression and gradually eroding potential rather than destroying it outright.

Dr Abiola Salami, a performance strategist, says the transition between school and work marks a critical failure point in youth development.

"Talent does not disappear. It deteriorates when it is not exercised, refined or rewarded," Salami notes.

He explains that identity in school is often externally defined through roles such as "best speaker" or "star athlete," but after graduation young people must build identity internally without structured validation. Many then attach value to immediate income rather than long-term mastery, trading potential for short-term survival.

While government initiatives such as the Hustler Fund provide access to capital, the evidence on their impact is mixed. By August 2024, roughly 21 million Kenyans had borrowed from the fund, but 19 million had defaulted, leaving only two million active borrowers.

The defaulted amount as at October 2023 stood at Sh10 billion, representing about 27 per cent of all disbursements, nearly double the default rate of other formal credit providers.

The 2024 FinAccess Household Survey by KNBS, the Central Bank of Kenya and FSD Kenya found that while 28 per cent of the population had borrowed from the fund, youth exclusion in financial services was simultaneously on the rise.

Salami argues that financing alone does not replace structured transition pathways. He suggests building post-graduation ecosystems including apprenticeships, mentorship pipelines, creator platforms and performance communities that prioritise growth over immediate output.

"The future of any nation is not just in how well it educates its youth, but in how effectively it absorbs, refines and deploys their talent after education," Salami says.