Jesse OdippoHats up, cheers and smiles all over. It’s graduation day! It’s not always ‘tarmacking’, as people say, as some fresh graduates have a plan, but then, amidst them, are young people who are left clueless about what is going to become of them after graduation. For long, youth unemployment has remained a statistic, as Kenya’s 2025 economic survey by KNBS outlined. For long, we have stuck to the statistics where we look at the unemployment rate among the youth in Kenya.
In the survey, KNBS outlined that the labour force participation rate for persons aged 15-24 years dropped from 27.3% in 2023 to 23.7% in 2024. This could either mean that young people are giving up looking for work, staying longer in school due to poor job prospects or working informally where they are not captured in the statistics.
On the other hand, there is a decline in skilled labour. The 2025 economic survey highlighted that the share of skilled labour in total manufacturing declined lower than the share of unskilled labour in 2024, indicating a demand for skilled labour. This means that Kenya’s labour market is not creating enough skilled jobs and not absorbing graduates, contributing to the skills mismatch. First-time job seekers, mostly youth, are joining a system that isn’t creating enough opportunities. This means that Kenya isn’t just facing a “youth unemployment” crisis. It’s facing a skills gap where the market demands skills youth don’t have, while also failing to create jobs that match the skills youth do have.
Why it matters to JAY4T
JAY4T’s mission is to leverage and transform the talents, skills and knowledge of the youth into social enterprise co-creation for impact, empowering them in the process. These statistics make this mission more challenging and urgent.
Here is what it means:
Youth disengagement from the labour market threatens long-term economic transformation
If young people believe that there are no real opportunities, they tend to retreat from job seeking, from education, and from innovation. This disengagement is costly, socially and economically.
Traditional training is not solving the skills mismatch
Many times, young people take up short courses to gain extra skills or to get the skills necessary for a particular job. These training programmes, which lack real-world applications, are producing skilled youth with nowhere to apply those skills. Market failure creates space for youth-led solutions
When industries aren’t creating enough decent jobs, and the public sector is overwhelmed, youth-led innovation can no longer be optional. It becomes essential.
How JAY4T is responding: Youth-Owned, Co-created Employment Social Enterprises
At JAY4T, in addition to mentorship and training, we focus on turning the skills gained during training and mentorship into co-created social enterprises. An approach which is grounded in co-creation, ownership, and employment.
Our social enterprises, KaaKazini, LigiOpen, and Sote Tule, create real employment opportunities. Through these enterprises, we tighten the skills gap through real work experience by providing hands-on experience and practical skills aligned with real market demand and problem-solving capacity.
This enables us to strengthen youth economic mobility in that, as the enterprises grow, young people develop the confidence, networks, and abilities to pursue better jobs, entrepreneurship, or leadership roles within their communities. A stepping stone to sustainable livelihoods.