The high economic growth in Africa has been hailed as the opportune time for Africa to take-off by taking advantage of the prevailing conducive environment. One of the major resources for Africa is the large young population which creates a market as well as human capital base to spur growth. However, as the deadline for Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) comes to a close, some of the regions still experience high levels of poverty especially among the youth. The significantly high level of youth unemployment poses significant challenges to socio-economic development and in some extreme cases it can result to conflict and revolutions as has been experienced in Arab spring. Kenya is not different; more than half of the youths are unemployed, although the literacy level has been relatively increasing and formal employment opportunity remains limited. Therefore, eradication of poverty in Kenya requires addressing the high youth unemployment by adopting innovative measures. Entrepreneurship and especially the successful establishment of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) has been proved to be quite beneficial. Globally SMEs provide significant contribution to national income, employment opportunities and innovations. Hence, effective approach and utilization of entrepreneurship activities will provide necessary impetus to alleviate youth unemployment and poverty. This project proposes to analyze the nature of youth unemployment and poverty in Murang’a County in Kenya and assess how entrepreneurship can be used to address this menace. We develop Local Poverty, Employment and Entrepreneurship Monitoring System (LPEEMS) and a set of core indicators that will be tracked to inform policy across Kenya.
Project leader: Diana Kimani
Project researchers: Phyllis Mumia Machio | Patrick Chege Kariuki | MICHAEL N. MURIGI
Scientific mentors: Jane Mariara
No journal publications.
No policy briefs.
No final reports.
No proposals.
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