There are no signs of unemployment and under-employment abating in Kenya. At the current economic trends in Kenya, these will grow worse and trouble us as a country and individual households in a big way as it will herald a lot of poverty among individuals, families, villages, communities and settlements.
It is an ominous sign that we are in big danger unless we take drastic measures to make job creation part of the major priorities of the government.
Yet we can’t resort to some archaic methods as has been suggested by some politicians that we need to retire people early to create room for younger generations. That is self-defeating, retrogressive, preposterous and lacking in imagination.
When you retire people who have consolidated their knowledge and skills to perfection you lose a lot.
Any growing decent, progressive and serious economy that wants to occupy a modern space and have its optimal strength in the world has to keep generating new ideas, new jobs and innovation.
For instance, any nation that ignores the advancement and the new fortunes and opportunities availed by new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence will be left far behind. Indeed, those who will take advantage of AI early enough will rule the world in many spheres including economy, military, and geopolitics and will be attractive going forward to the next decades and perhaps centuries.
Those who will miss out or be slow will surely rue it in time. So here is a time to take advantage of and initiate radical and revolutionary measures to make the Kenyan economy a star in the global space.
We cannot keep lamenting the morass and the mess we are in of unemployment and under-employment. We have to be radical and turn things around rather quickly.
At the current economic conditions and based on various analyses across sectors and industries in Kenya, the problem of unemployment and under-employment won’t go away any time soon. We will continue to experience worse forms of both.
If you listen to players in various industries on their own or through economic trade associations, we are in a big economic quagmire and political morass on what to do.
More taxes or more borrowing, the solutions touted to solve our economic problems, won’t help what with wastage in government and our endemic corruption. Some radical changes have to be effected to get the country out of the economic morass.
Whenever I visit my rural area, I’m given loads of CVs for young people by themselves or parents or relatives to come to Nairobi and look for jobs for them.
Every week I get calls from former colleagues at various workplaces who are looking for jobs. It has become impossible to tell anyone that you have no chance of getting them requisite jobs any time soon or even at all.
Yet that is the body language message that you are forced to give. Every month you get news of a company or business either downsizing or closing down. Some of the formerly blue chips companies who were dazzling with dream jobs are gone, while others are downsizing or emigrating to other destinations.
In late 1997 and early 1998 while looking for a suitable job soon after university, I would walk along Enterprise Road in Nairobi's Industrial Area and other streets scouting for where I could get a job.
The area was teeming with manufacturers and global companies. In the middle of the city, there were many tour companies to drop CVs to. As much as a lot of service business has gone online, one can tell there is a problem.
Today, one of the possibly easier jobs to get though not that much is to be a bar, pub or wine and spirits shop attendant. Obviously, the pay is poor but it seems the only one to offer an opportunity to work for many.
Perhaps the other one is to be a matatu tout. In a sense, some informal jobs with poor pay and not looking for much skill (under-employment) seem the only viable alternative for unemployment.
I feel sad for the people who are being retrenched or downsized from their white colour jobs. I have been there. The experience in light of the kind of economy we are in can destroy even the most stoic-spirited person.
It is not easy to get another suitable job. The alternatives often touted, especially in the media, such as farming and informal businesses, are not easy at all, not with the economy we are in.
I do feel that there is a lot the government has to do to stimulate the economy. It has to make the businesses work. Businesses are the biggest employers in any decent economy.
A situation where it is only the government that can offer decent and sustainable jobs as we look to be in, shows a non-performing economy. Some of the measures to export labour are welcome but are not enough. We have to re-engineer our economy. It is very urgent.